As a Sephardic Jew from Argentina, Rita Arditti’s experience as “a minority within a minority” drove her to document another invisible group: the grandmothers of the disappeared children. Arditti began her career as a biologist, researching genetics at Brandeis and Harvard, and founding two activist groups, Science for the People and the Women’s Community Cancer Project. But after agreeing to translate for a Boston tour of the grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, Arditti was drawn to their cause and began to document their work. Her book Searching for Life: The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Disappeared Children of Argentina raised international awareness of the risks these women took to recover their grandchildren who had disappeared during Argentina’s brutal dictatorship. The book was used to support the grandmothers’ nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Rita Arditti was honored at the 2005 Women Who Dared event in Boston.