If you’re looking for proof that purpose doesn’t retire, look no further than the women over 60 who are shaping the year’s biggest conversations. Senior women leading change are organizing for climate action, pushing equality forward, and solving problems in local politics, often with a mix of lifelong activism and steady, mindful leadership.
Why Senior Women Are Moving the Needle Now
Age brings perspective, networks, and the patience to work through thorny problems. Many of the women below have been at this for decades; others pivoted later in life when they saw a need. Either way, they’re modeling a calm, results‑first approach that communities are hungry for.
Climate Action: Seasoned Voices with Staying Power
Mary Robinson, Ireland — Climate justice and intergenerational leadership
Photo: Wikipedia
Ireland’s former President and chair of The Elders continues to frame climate as a justice issue, centering the people most affected and championing intergenerational collaboration.
In 2025 she helped convene the Mary Robinson Climate and Nature Conference and wrote on solidarity for The Elders’ climate program. She’s also a co‑founder of Project Dandelion, a women‑led global climate justice campaign.
Catherine Coleman Flowers, United States — Environmental Justice in Overlooked Places
Photo: www.catherinecolemanflowers.com
MacArthur Fellow Catherine Coleman Flowers keeps national attention on wastewater, sanitation, and public‑health failures in rural communities, especially in Alabama’s Black Belt. Her Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice continues this work, and she was honored at the 2025 TIME Earth Awards for her advocacy. For readers new to her, Flowers’ biography and research track record underline how environmental justice intersects with health and infrastructure.
At the 2025 TIME Earth Awards, she shared: “I grew up walking through corn fields, sampling ears of corn… But the rural landscape wasn’t just idyllic, it was educational… the lack of adequate sanitation meant businesses weren’t compelled to invest in the region.”
Siila Watt‑Cloutier, Canada — Human Rights and the Arctic
Photo: University of Victoria – Carson Tagoona
Siila Watt-Cloutier, the Canadian Inuk activist and former Chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, has spent decades making the case that climate change is a human rights crisis. From her early work helping secure the Stockholm Convention on toxic chemicals in the Arctic to leading the 2005 petition that reframed greenhouse gas emissions as a violation of Inuit rights, her approach has always linked environmental issues to human well-being.
A co-nominee for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, she has received numerous international awards, including the Right Livelihood Award and the UN Champions of the Earth Award. In 2025, Watt-Cloutier launched A Radical Act of Hope, a podcast blending memoir and advocacy, where she explains, “Indigenous wisdom is the medicine the world needs… it can guide us towards a more sustainable and equitable future for all.”
She has also delivered keynotes, including at the Right Here, Right Now Global Climate Summit, urging that, “We can no longer just think our way through these issues of climate change. We have to feel our way through, and we’ve got to connect as a common humanity.” Through public speaking, mentorship, and storytelling, she continues to champion “conscious leadership” rooted in cultural knowledge, emotional connection, and intergenerational collaboration.
Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico — A Climate Scientist in High Office
Photo: Instagram
Claudia Sheinbaum, an energy and climate scientist with a PhD in energy engineering, became Mexico’s first female president in October 2024. She co-authored more than 100 academic papers and contributed to multiple Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, grounding her leadership in technical know-how.
She has committed to steering Mexico toward a cleaner energy future, setting an ambitious goal of sourcing 45% of electricity from renewable energy by 2030, even as she continues to back state-controlled energy providers like CFE (Mexico’s state-owned electric utility) and Pemex (Mexico’s state-owned oil and gas company).
In 2024, Sheinbaum secured a constitutional amendment ensuring CFE retains at least 54% of electricity generation, while allowing regulated private participation in the remaining share. Her administration also unveiled a $23.4 billion energy infrastructure investment plan to boost renewable capacity and upgrade transmission networks.
Despite her environmental credentials, in 2025 she pivoted policy to revive hydraulic fracturing, initiating talks with private firms to tap shale resources in major basins and budgeted substantial funds to revitalize Pemex. Parallel to that shift, her government signaled its aim for Pemex to become financially self-sufficient by 2027 through a mixture of debt reduction efforts and increased production. This balancing act illustrates the challenge and political tightrope of advancing climate goals while ensuring energy sovereignty and economic stability.
Christiana Figueres, Costa Rica — The Architect Still Coaching
Photo: Instagram
Christiana Figueres, the Costa Rican diplomat who guided the Paris Agreement to adoption in 2015 as Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, remains a sought-after strategist in 2025. She co-hosts the climate podcast Outrage + Optimism and continues to advise governments, businesses, and civil society on how to meet net-zero targets.
In early 2025, she briefed the Oxford Climate Journalism Network, describing Brazil’s role as host of COP30 as “a substantial difference in intention and integrity” compared with recent petrostate presidencies, citing its stewardship of the Amazon and diplomatic credibility.
She has also been outspoken about fossil-fuel influence, warning that “carbon majors are keeping the world hooked on fossil fuels, with no plans to slow production,” and pointing to the disproportionate role of state-owned oil companies in global emissions.
Figueres remains focused on solutions-oriented messaging, urging communicators to strip away jargon, avoid doom-only narratives, and foreground clear, actionable pathways to change, an approach she says is essential for mobilizing public will ahead of COP30.
Jane Fonda, United States — Movement builder
Photo: Instagram
Jane Fonda is still recruiting and training people for climate action through Fire Drill Fridays, the nationwide advocacy effort she launched with Greenpeace USA. The project continues to focus on phasing out fossil fuels and supporting climate litigation against major polluters with fresh calls to action and public conversations this year.
Reflecting on her role, she said, “Young people were asking for us. They were saying, ‘We didn’t create this crisis, but it’s our future that’s going to be destroyed. Where are the older people to join us?’ So I said, ‘I’m here. I volunteer.’”
In her 2025 Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award speech, she urged empathy and unity, reminding us, “We get to open people’s minds… Our job is to understand another human being so profoundly that we can touch their souls… Make no mistake, empathy is not weak… woke just means you give a damn about other people.”
Equality and Human Rights: Legal Minds and Movement Icons
Anita Hill, United States — Democracy, Gender Equity, and the Courts
Photo: Wikipedia
Anita Hill, law professor and advocate, continues drawing powerful connections between gender equity, the rule of law, and democratic health. In early 2025, during a speech at Dartmouth, she warned that “politics should not invade the court,” arguing that public confidence erodes when the Supreme Court is viewed through a partisan lens.
Then, at her own Brandeis University, she emphasized the importance of an independent federal judiciary in guarding democracy, noting that “the trial courts and Courts of Appeal… are the ones who will move us out of this crisis” when other branches falter.
On the topic of gender-based violence, she urged audiences to turn activism into civic action: “We’ve got to make gender‑based violence an issue that we will vote about, that we will lobby about,” she said, underscoring how systemic change requires civic pressure and legal enforcement alike. Hill continues to lecture and write in 2025, inviting us to engage both intellectually and politically in the ongoing fight for gender justice.
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberia — Training the Next Generation
Photo: Wikipedia
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first democratically elected female head of state and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, remains a beacon for women’s leadership. Since leaving office in 2018, she’s continued forging meaningful pathways for others through the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Presidential Center for Women and Development, established to support African women rising into public service roles. A centerpiece of the Center’s work, the Amujae Initiative, which means “we are going up” in Liberian dialect, has now welcomed its fourth cohort of exceptional women leaders from across the continent, offering them mentorship, leadership coaching, and a pan‑African support network.
In 2024, Sirleaf was named the 10th recipient of the O’Connor Justice Prize for her commitment to the rule of law, justice, and human rights, in recognition of her enduring influence beyond her time in office. She is also set to keynote the 2025 Nalafem Summit in Freetown, where she will speak and further extend her platform for empowering the next generation.
Reflecting on her mission, Sirleaf has said: “When I work for the promotion of women to higher positions, I do so in recognition of the fact that I would not want any woman to have the experiences I had.” She also emphasizes the value women bring to leadership: “They settle conflict rather than fight to resolve it… They seek an alternative route to peace.”
Dolores Huerta, United States — Labor, Immigrant Rights, and Civic Power
Photo: Wikipedia
At 95, Dolores Huerta remains a force of organizing and advocacy through her namesake foundation. In May 2025, the Dolores Huerta Foundation marked International Workers’ Day with a renewed call for fair pay, workplace safety, immigrant worker rights, and civic participation, underscoring that “every person should be treated fairly. Everyone deserves a safe job, fair pay, and respect.” She also spoke with KPBS this summer, lamenting current social trends: “Everybody’s rights are being trampled… social justice is in the dark right now.”
In a pointed interview with Politico, she decried federal immigration policies as being “very, very different” from past, describing the situation, children separated and community fear, as “an atrocity… what they’ve been doing to the immigrant community.” More bluntly still, in a conversation with El País, she called the sitting president “a fascist whose goal is to harm and destroy,” urging communities to organize, vote, and leverage grassroots power for change.
Huerta’s foundation continues to anchor her legacy in lasting impact. Built on a 2002 Puffin/Nation Prize donation, it spearheads civic engagement, education equity, and leadership development in underrepresented communities. She continues to show up in public spheres: in August 2025, she served as Guest of Honor at the 2025 Visionary Women’s Luncheon, a platform honoring her commitment to justice and leadership, and rallying the next generation to take action.
Local Politics: Results You Can Count
Karen Bass, United States — Big‑City Progress, Block by Block
Photo: Wikipedia
Since taking office in December 2022, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has made homelessness a central focus, declaring a state of emergency on her very first day and boldly activating coordinated strategies like the Inside Safe and Pathway Home programs.
According to the 2025 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count, homelessness in the city fell by 3.4%, and countywide by 4%, marking the first time in history that the region saw two consecutive years of decline. In the city alone, unsheltered homelessness dropped by 17.5% over those two years, a level of reduction unmatched since LAHSA began tracking the data in 2005. At a press briefing, Bass reflected, “This Point in Time Count makes one thing clear: change is possible when we refuse to accept encampments as normal and refuse to leave people behind.”
Her Inside Safe initiative has shifted thousands into immediate temporary housing (hotel rooms and shelters) with a humane, urgency-focused approach, budgeting nearly $1.3 billion for homeless-related services in 2023–24 and confronting the crisis head-on rather than waiting for permanent solutions to arrive. These programs, complemented by a record number of permanent housing placements and partnerships across agency lines, illustrate how Bass and her team are bending trends in a vast, complex urban landscape.
Anne Hidalgo, France — Redesigning a Capital’s Streets
Photo: Wikipedia
Under Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s leadership since 2014, Paris has undergone a dramatic transformation toward active transport and clean air. Between 2020 and 2025, the city added around 84 km of new bike lanes, which helped spur a 71% increase in cycling after the pandemic, just one factor in a broader shift toward walking, biking, and public transit. More broadly, pollution levels in Paris have fallen by roughly half since 2005, with particulate matter (PM2.5) and nitrogen dioxide levels showing drops of about 55% and 50% respectively.
In November 2024, Paris established a Limited Traffic Zone (LTZ) across its first four arrondissements. The zone bans through-traffic while still permitting access for local residents, deliveries, cabs, and emergency vehicles, an effort aimed at curbing pollution and improving livability in central Paris. Public support remains strong: in March 2025, nearly two-thirds of Paris voters approved a referendum to pedestrianize and green 500 more streets, part of a larger move to expand “green lungs” across neighbourhoods.
Thanks to these policies, new bike infrastructure, car-free zones, aggressive parking cuts, and speed limits, Paris has slashed harmful emissions, grown walkable space, and emerged as Europe’s leading city for child‑friendly cycling, surpassing long‑standing leaders like Amsterdam and Copenhagen.
Read more: 24 Inspirational Women That Every Woman Over 60 Should Know About.
Let’s Have a Conversation:
Which local problem (environmental, equity‑related, or civic) do you care about the most? Who’s already doing that work where you live? Which of the leaders above inspires you most, and why? What would their first move be if they were tackling your neighborhood’s toughest challenge?