Mary Alexander "Molly" Yard (July 6, 1912 – September 21, 2005)[1] was an American feminist and social activist who served as the eighth president of the National Organization for Women (NOW) from 1987 to 1991 and was a link between first and second-wave feminism.

[1][2][4] She became active in Democratic Party politics, and in the late 1940s and early 1950s worked with the Clark-Dilworth team to unseat the entrenched city machine in Philadelphia.

She became active in NOW while a resident of the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh in 1974, and joined the national staff in 1978[5] during the unsuccessful campaign to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), serving as a lobbyist in Washington, D.C. She raised more than $1 million in less than six months for that drive.

As NOW's political director from 1985 to 1987, she was instrumental in the successful 1986 campaign to defeat anti-abortion referendums in Arkansas, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Oregon.

On taking office in August, she vowed to make the organization more visible and work to defeat President Reagan's nomination of Judge Robert H. Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court, which was ultimately rejected by the U.S. Senate.

[6] In September, she was briefly arrested during a nonviolent NOW demonstration at the Vatican Embassy in Washington, D.C. in response to the Catholic Church's stances on birth control, abortion, and homosexuality.

[8] As NOW president, she opposed U.S. involvement in the Persian Gulf War, saying Americans should not be fighting for "clan-run monarchies" in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia that denied women's rights.