Norma Meras Swenson

Swenson has a Master of Public Health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in 1998, where she also taught from 2000 to 2017, specializing in Women, Heath, and Development.

In 1970, Swenson along with twelve other women began to create Our Bodies Ourselves (OBOS). Receiving its inspiration from a women's liberation conference in 1969, Our Bodies Ourselves, then known as the Boston Women's Health Book Collective, took form as the twelve women shared their stories surrounding the mistreatment they felt by doctors and the realization of the ignorance about their bodies. Their mission was to offer women more cohesive and non-biased medical information. Ultimately, the OBOS founders shared their research findings in a 193-page booklet called Women and Their Bodies. Their research and personal experiences became the first edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves in 1971. "We were furious about how many men wrote about women’s bodies or sexuality without knowing much, and we weren’t going to write unless we knew what we were talking about," Swenson stated in a 2017 interview with Aging Today.

The film, She's Beautiful When She's Angry explains the history of the women who founded the modern women's movement from 1966 to 1971. The movie moves from the founding of NOW, with women in hats and gloves, to the beginning of more radical groups of women's liberation. "She's Beautiful When She's Angry" articulates the stories of 30 individual women and the Our Bodies Ourselves collective, all of which fought for their own equality and in the process created a revolution. Created by filmmaker Mary Dore, "She's Beautiful When She's Angry" is the first film about second-wave feminism to illustrate clearly the distinctions between what became the global women's health movement and how, as a movement, OBOS was somewhat closer to the heart of women's liberation than to mainstream feminism at the time. Rather than celebrating "girl power," Dore illustrates an honest, critical, and inclusive image of the history of second wave feminism. "It explains the place of “Our Bodies, Ourselves” in providing a feminist guide to women's health and medical care, while providing a bibliography for who was organizing and how to organize for both local and national change."

Norma Meras Swenson (born 1932) is an expert in the field of maternal and child health as well as in reproductive and sexual health rights. Swenson is a founding member of Our Bodies, Ourselves. She was a co-author and editor for many editions of Our Bodies, Ourselves.