Vilma Espín was a Cuban revolutionary, guerrilla fighter, and founder of the Federation of Cuban Women, and she did more than anyone to place women's emancipation at the center of the Cuban Revolution. Born in Santiago de Cuba in 1930, she studied chemical engineering at the University of Oriente, one of the first women in Cuba to do so. As a student she joined the struggle against the Batista dictatorship and became a close collaborator of Frank País in the underground of the 26th of July Movement. Under the code name Débora, she carried messages, smuggled weapons, and helped organize the Santiago uprising of November 1956, timed to support the landing of the Granma.

As the repression intensified, Espín joined the Rebel Army in the mountains and fought with the Second Eastern Front under Raúl Castro, whom she married after the victory. In 1960 she founded the Federation of Cuban Women, the FMC, and led it for nearly half a century. Through the FMC, women mobilized by the hundreds of thousands. They became teachers in the literacy campaign of 1961, entered the workforce and higher education in historic numbers, and built a national network of childcare centers that made their participation possible.

Espín understood that legal equality was only a beginning, and she fought to change the attitudes and household relations that kept women subordinate. Under her leadership, Cuba guaranteed women's reproductive rights and adopted a Family Code in 1975 that made men and women equally responsible for housework and child-rearing. She served on the highest bodies of the Communist Party and represented Cuban women around the world until her death in 2007. Her legacy endures as proof that the liberation of women must be organized, fought for, and built as an essential part of any revolution.