"Do something to help another woman every day." This motto describes the way Nancy Woodhull lived her life as journalist and activist, and as a mother and a friend. When she died of breast cancer in April 1997 at age 52, Woodhull had already risen to great heights within the news media. At the same time, she boldly challenged the industry on a wide range of diversity and equity issues. She made it to the top of the news media without ever compromising her commitment to women's rights.  

Throughout her 20-year career, Maribel Gutierrez has been deeply involved in covering the experiences of rural and Indian communities in Mexico and especially in the state of Guerrero, one of the poorest in Mexico. In 1993, she co-founded El Sur, an independent newspaper covering local news, human and political rights, militarization, corruption and social problems, in a state where almost all press is under government control.

Bina Bektiati began reporting about politics for the independent newsweekly Tempo in 1991. In 1994 the magazine was banned and its license revoked by the Suharto regime. A government-controlled publication replaced Tempo, but Bektiati refused to join. Instead, she challenged the ban in the courts and helped found the Alliance of Independent Journalists, Indonesia's only independent journalists association.

Before becoming a photojournalist, Corinne Dufka spent ten years as a social worker. Her interest in photojournalism began while working in El Salvador for a humanitarian organization providing mental health services to the victims of civil war. She found that photography allowed her to document the human rights abuses experienced by civilians and she began freelancing.

As the editorial page editor for The Washington Post, Meg Greenfield was one of the most powerful women in newspaper journalism in the United States. She was responsible for the tone, direction and policy of one of the nation's most politically influential publications. Greenfield was able to strengthen or discourage careers, both in journalism and politics, and to shape national policy.  

A widow and mother of four, Lucy Sichone wrote for The Post, Zambia's leading daily newspaper. In February 1996, Sichone went into hiding, along with her 3-month-old baby, to avoid imprisonment for writing articles critical of the Zambian parliament. She was charged with contempt of Parliament, which would have dealt her a sentence of indefinite detention. The government issued a reward for information on her whereabouts, but Sichone remained in hiding, continuing to write articles demanding a return to press freedom for Zambia and her right to a fair trial.

For more than a decade Ayse Önal has reported on Turkish politics, organized crime and conflicts in the Middle East. She was arrested and detained in Iraq while reporting on the Gulf War, threatened by Islamic fundamentalists and put on the revolutionary left's death list. In 1994 Önal was shot and wounded by the Turkish mob because of her stories linking the government and organized crime; she subsequently went into hiding for three months.

Saida Ramadan, a Sudanese journalist, began writing in exile from Egypt after the Muslim fundamentalist-backed regime of Lt. General Omar Hassan al-Bashir took power in Sudan in 1989 and began a systematic campaign against the media. At the time, Ramadan was a correspondent for the Sudanese paper Al-Alam in Cairo. The paper was shut down, her passport revoked and she was not allowed back in her homeland.

Helen Thomas, after 57 years at United Press International, was known as a Washington institution and the "Dean of the White House Press Corps." Since she began her career, she has been fighting battles and opening doors for women.

Algerian journalists, embattled from both sides in the ongoing civil war, continue their daily struggle to work as well as to stay alive. As a television producer, director and reporter, Horria Saihi has fought government censorship and the threat of fundamentalism since the mid-1980s. She has been condemned to death by Muslim fundamentalists, and went into hiding in late 1994 after discovering that she was on a hit list.

One of the most respected journalists in China, Gao Yu was in prison when her award was announced. An economic and political reporter, she was sentenced in 1993 to six years in prison for "leaking state secrets," through - ironically - a pro-Chinese newspaper in Hong Kong. The charges brought against Gao led some observers to believe that the underlying goal was to send a message about acceptable boundaries of press freedom and limit media criticism of China's government.

While editor-in-chief of the independent weekly, The Sunday Magazine, Chris Anyanwu declined to publicly endorse the military regime of General Sani Abacha. Weeks later, she was arrested and sentenced to life in prison, charged with publishing stories about an alleged coup plot against Abacha and refusing to reveal the sources.

Katharine Graham, former Chairman of the Executive Committee of The Washington Post Company's Board of Directors, was recognized for the bold choices she made throughout her more than 30-year career at the newspaper.

For 20 years Razia Bhatti was a leader in Pakistani journalism. After leaving a major magazine in 1988 because of limitations imposed on her writing, she founded and served as editor-in-chief of Newsline magazine.

As an international correspondent for CNN, Christiane Amanpour has consistently delivered insightful and extensive reporting from some of the most dangerous hot spots in recent memory. For two years she covered civil strife in Bosnia, then the aftermath of the genocide in Rwanda, and the overthrow of the Haitian government.