Ruth Neto

Maria Ruth Neto (born 1936) is a former Angolan independence activist, political organizer, and women's rights campaigner. Although she studied nursing in Portugal and Germany, in 1968 she joined the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola, MPLA) and focused on securing Angola's independence from Portugal. Fearing retaliation from the Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado (International and State Defense Police, PIDE), she lived abroad in Germany, Tanzania and Zambia until 1975, when independence was achieved. From the early 1970s, she was the leader of the Organização das Mulheres de Angola (Organization of Angolan Women, OMA) and became the organization's first national coordinator in 1976. OMA was an affiliate of the Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF) and from 1976 she served as a vice president on their executive committee and attended and spoke at many of the organization's conferences and seminars over the next decades. In 1977, she was elected to the Central Committee of the MPLA, and was re-elected in 1985. When the leadership of the OMA was restructured in 1983, she served as its secretary general until 1999. In 1986, she became the secretary general of the Pan-African Women's Organization and held that post until 1997.

Neto has been recognized with numerous honors. She received Cuba's highest recognition of women, the Orden Ana Betancourt (Order of Ana Betancourt [ru]), in 1985 and was honored as a grand companion in the Order of the Companions of O. R. Tambo of South Africa in 2014. In 2015, she became the first woman to receive the Son and Daughter of Africa Awards for the Promotion of Peace from the African Union. Her portrait was hung in the headquarters of the African Union in 2017 along with other women considered to be the founding mothers of the Pan-African Women's Organization. That year, the OMA hosted a tribute to honor her twenty-one years of service as the secretary general of the organization, and Rádio e Televisão de Portugal (Portuguese Radio and Television Service) featured her biography in its program Rostos (Faces).