International Women’s Day and Herbalism: 6 Women to Know

Here’s the thing about International Women’s Day and herbalism: if we only celebrate “inspiring women” with pretty quotes, we miss the real work. Women have carried plant medicine through monasteries, kitchens, clinics, and community health networks for centuries, often with less institutional credit than their male peers.

This International Women’s Day, I want us to do something practical: learn the names, lineages, and methods of female herbalists whose work still shapes how we practice today.

Why this matters right now

International Women’s Day 2026 is being observed across the UN system with the call to center rights, justice, and concrete action for women and girls, not symbolic nods (UN DESA/UN Women summary). In herbalism, “action” looks like this:

• Crediting women’s contributions accurately
• Funding women-led community herbal education
• Protecting medicinal plants from over-harvest
• Teaching herb-drug interaction safety like lives depend on it (because they do)

And yes, this has policy relevance. The WHO’s new Global Traditional Medicine Strategy 2025-2034 explicitly centers evidence, safety, and regulation. That is exactly the bridge many women herbalists have been building for decades.

The Science:

The modern herbal field is not “old wives’ tales.” It’s ethnobotany, pharmacognosy, and clinical observation in conversation with lab and outcomes research. Safety has to lead:

• NIH’s NCCIH now even provides a HerbList app focused on evidence, side effects, and interaction checks.
• Clinically relevant herb-drug interactions are real and documented, especially with anticoagulants, sedatives, and narrow-therapeutic-index meds (systematic review, PubMed).

If your herbal education is missing interaction literacy, it is incomplete.

The Tradition:

Women preserved materia medica through domestic care, midwifery, folk practice, apprenticeships, and community networks long before formal institutions took them seriously. This is not nostalgia. It is infrastructure.

Below are six women to know, with different eras and methods, but one shared thread: practical healing anchored in lived reality.

1) Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179): System-builder in an era that ignored women’s intellect

Most people meet Hildegard as a mystic. I want you to also meet her as a compiler of medical and botanical thought. Her works Physica and Causae et Curae helped preserve medieval plant-medicine frameworks in written form.

• Historical overview: Encyclopaedia Britannica

What I respect here is not romantic medieval medicine. It’s documentation discipline. She wrote things down, organized observations, and treated plants such as yarrow (Achillea millefolium) and fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) as part of a coherent view of human health.

2) Juliette de Bairacli Levy (1912-2009): Field ethnography before “ethnobotany” was a buzzword

Levy traveled with rural and nomadic communities and recorded practical veterinary and household herbal knowledge that mainstream models often dismissed.

• Profile: New Forest National Park Authority

Do I agree with every historical claim made around her? No. But she modeled something important: observe outcomes, learn from local people, and respect low-cost care traditions.

3) Rosemary Gladstar: Community-access herbalism at scale

If you learned western herbalism in North America, you’ve felt her influence whether you realize it or not.

• Founded the California School of Herbal Studies in 1978 (CSHS)
• Co-founded Traditional Medicinals in 1974 (Traditional Medicinals)
• Founded United Plant Savers, which pushed conservation of at-risk medicinal plants (United Plant Savers)

Her biggest contribution, in my view, is making herbal knowledge accessible without pretending safety is optional.

4) Tieraona Low Dog, MD: Clinical bridge-builder

The “herbalism versus Western medicine” argument is exhausting and unhelpful. Dr. Tieraona Low Dog’s leadership in professional herbal circles reflects the opposite approach: integration with accountability.

• Listed among past presidents/chairs of the American Herbalists Guild (AHG history)

This is the roommate model I talk about constantly: conventional medicine for acute and emergency care, plant medicine for prevention and chronic support when appropriate.

5) Aviva Romm, MD, midwife, herbalist: Women’s health literacy done responsibly

Women’s health in herbal spaces is often where misinformation spreads fastest. Romm’s work stands out because she keeps both clinical and traditional frameworks in the room.

• Professional background and scope: Aviva Romm - About
• AHG leadership context: AHG history

You can have warm, person-centered care and still require dosage precision and contraindication screening. In fact, you must.

6) Cassandra Quave, PhD: Ethnobotany and drug discovery in real time

Quave’s research track shows what contemporary botanical science can look like when it is rigorous and humane: investigate traditional plant use, then test mechanisms like quorum sensing and biofilm modulation. Think garlic (Allium sativum) or oregano (Origanum vulgare) not as folklore props, but as chemically active systems worth testing carefully.

• Academic profile: Emory/Winship profile

This is one of my favorite modern examples of tradition meeting bench science without either side becoming caricature.

Safety & Contraindications (Read This First)

Herbs are pharmacologically active. “Natural” does not mean universally safe.

Do not start new herbs without checking for medication interactions, especially if you take:

• Blood thinners/antiplatelet drugs
• Sedatives, sleep meds, or anti-seizure medications
• Thyroid medication
• Immunosuppressants
• Cardiac medications with narrow dosing ranges

Higher-risk groups need clinician guidance first:

• Pregnancy and breastfeeding
• Children
• People with chronic liver or kidney disease
• Anyone preparing for surgery

Use evidence-based tools and review with your GP or pharmacist before adding any protocol.

How to celebrate International Women’s Day in herbalism (for real)

1. Buy one book by a female herbalist and actually read the contraindications chapter.
2. Support one women-led herb school scholarship fund.
3. Plant one medicinal species in your bioregion instead of buying trendy imports.
4. Audit your own language. Replace one-shot-fix language with precise outcomes and safety limits.
5. Teach one younger person how to identify a common local medicinal plant correctly.

The takeaway

International Women’s Day should not be a content theme you post and forget. In herbalism, it’s a reminder to credit women as knowledge keepers, researchers, clinicians, and conservationists, while holding the same evidence and safety standards for everyone.

If you take one thing from this piece, let it be this: honoring female herbalists means funding their work, citing their work, and practicing with the level of care they fought to normalize.

Talk to your GP before starting herbs, especially if you use prescription meds.

Be well and be wise.