Dulles NOW was accredited in 1981.  It was assigned a vast area around Dulles  International Airport in Northern Virginia extending from Vienna to  Leesburg and beyond.   The Chapter was founded by women of various ages, professions, religions,  education and personal history.  Yet, all shared  the same independence of mind, commitment to the rights of all women and to non-political partisanship although most identified with the Democratic party. 
The group quickly became one of the largest chapter in Virginia.

In the  past twenty years, we raised funds, lobbied and participated in  countless conferences, lectures, marches and demonstrations to advance  the status of women and girls:  Equal Rights Amendment,  anti-discriminatory laws under Title VII, violence against women,  greater participation of women in politics, reproductive rights, other civil and constitutional rights, anti-war and such. 

The Chapter was one of the first group in America to engage in the legal struggle against sexual harassment in the workplace.

Marie-Jose Ragab, current president, became a Dulles NOW activist in 1986. When she  became International Director for NOW a few years later, the chapter voted to expand its program to include the International Trafficking of  Women, sexual mutilations and the threat that growing religious fundamentalism represented to people everywhere and specifically to  women, the first local NOW chapter to do so.

Dulles NOW gained national and international notoriety when it rebelled against the national NOW leadership in 1998, gaining thousand of followers and notoriety.  

Wishing the group to disappear magically,  a frustrated  and angry National NOW declared that "Dulles NOW does not exist" with the same comic desperation that made them deny that partial-birth  abortions were rampant in America and that the Paula Jones case was not  about sexual harassment. 

www.dullesnow.org was created in 2000.  Our work has largely expanded since.  The site is assiduously followed in the
US and abroad and subjected to numerous destructive attacks. 


Dulles NOW does not accept paid contributions.