Women's History

Timeline - The 20th Century

4000 B.C.-30 A.D. | 1000-1200 | 1300-1718 | 1762-1896 | 1902-1999 | 2000+

1902

Australian women get the right to vote in all federal elections. Vida Goldstein runs for the senate there, becoming the first woman in the British Empire to run for a national office.

1903

Marie Curie is awarded Nobel Prize for Physics for discovery of radioactivity.

1909

Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf is the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize for literature.

1911

Marie Curie is awarded second Nobel Prize for Chemistry for her discovery and isolation of pure radium.

1914

The Amateur Athletic Union in the United States allows women to register for swimming events for the first time.

1916

Margaret Sanger opens first birth control clinic.

1917

Russian Revolution; Soviet women get the vote.

Maud Howe Elliott and Laura Howe Richards are the first women to win the Pulitzer Prize for biography. They share the award for their profile of their mother, entitled Julia Ward Howe.

1918

Canadian women get the vote.

Hungarian feminist and pacifist Rosika Schwimmer becomes the world's first woman ambassador when she is appointed ambassador to Switzerland.

1920

With the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, U.S. women get the vote.

1921

Lila Acheson Wallace is cofounder of the Reader's Digest. Edith Wharton wins the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

1922

U.S.S.R. is established. Women's Amateur Athletic Association is founded.

1923

The first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for poetry is Edna St. Vincent Millay, for The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver.

1924

Nellie Tayloe Ross is elected first woman governor in U.S. (Wyoming).

1928

The first woman to swim the English Channel is U.S. swimmer Gertrude Ederle.

Women compete for the first time in Olympic field events.

U.S. anthropologist Margaret Mead publishes Coming of Age in Samoa.

Age of suffrage is lowered from 30 to 21 in Great Britain.

1930

World population reaches two billion.

1931

Margaret Sanger publishes My Fight for Birth Control.

1932

Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly across the Atlantic alone.

1933

Frances Perkins becomes Secretary of Labor, the first woman cabinet member in U.S. history.

1939-1945

World War II.

1945

Fashion magazine Elle is founded.

1949

Communists establish People's Republic of China; women get the vote.

1950

In India, women over 21 yeas old get the right to vote.

1958

Swedish diplomat Agda Rössel is the first woman to head a permanent delegation to the United Nations.

1959

Shirley Muldowney began her professional drag racing career.

1963

Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becomes first woman in space.

1966

National Organization for Women (NOW) is founded in the United States.

Indira Gandhi becomes prime minister of India.

1969

Golda Meir becomes prime minister of Israel.

1976

World population reaches four billion.

1978

Janet Guthrie qualifies for the Indianapolis 500 for a second time and finished the race in 8th position.

1979

Margaret Thatcher elected first woman prime minister of Great Britain.

1981

Sandra Day O'Connor appointed first woman U.S. Supreme Court Justice.

1983

Ellen Taafe Zwilich is the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Music.

1984

Geraldine Ferraro becomes first woman vice-presidential nominee of a major U.S. political party.

Kathryn Sullivan is first U.S. woman astronaut to walk in space.

1986

Corazon Aquino elected president of Philippines.

1988

Benazir Bhutto sworn in as prime minister of Pakistan.

1990

Mary Robinson is elected President of Ireland.

1993

Kim Campbell is elected the first woman prime minister of Canada.

Tansu Cillar is elected the first woman prime minister of Turkey.

Janet Reno became U.S. attorney general.

1994

Executive Ann Marie Fudge is named head of Maxwell House, a unit of Kraft General Foods.

May 26: President Clinton signs into law the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE). FACE makes it a crime to blockade or commit violence against reproductive health-care clinics.

The Violence Against Women Act is passed, giving women a federal civil rights provision to combat gender-based violent crimes. It also authorizes the expenditure of $1.6 billion dollars over a six-year period to curb violence against women.

1995

United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women is held in Beijing, China.

Myrlie Evers-Williams is elected chairperson of the board of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). A writer, activist and widow of slain civil rights leaders Medgar Evers, Williams wins by one vote.

1996

Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska is awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize for Literature.

March — New data from the Census Bureau finds that women own one-third of all U.S. businesses, employing 26% of the nation's work force. Sales from the 7.95 million women-owned businesses have jumped 236% since 1987, and employment in those businesses rose to 18.5 million workers from only 6.6 million in 1987. According to the National Foundation for Women Business Owners, the number of women-owned companies increased 78% in the last nine years while growth among U.S. firms was only 47%.

Sgt. Heather Johnsen becomes the first woman to guard the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

1997

Czech-born American diplomat Madeleine Albright is unanimously confirmed by the Senate and becomes the first female U.S. Secretary of State.

Jody Williams, the American activist who helped found the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), is awarded the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize.

Janet Jagan, wife of Guyana's former president, the late Cheddi Jagan, is sworn in as Guyana's president in December. Jagan, born in Chicago, has lived in Guyana for 54 years.

Ms. Foundation announced its list of the top women role models for today's girls. Topping the list was Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the highest ranking woman ever to serve in the U.S. government. Ms. Foundation President Marie Wilson said that girls should strive to claim the presidency for women. "The role model that's missing is a woman in the Oval Office," she said.

Poet Lisel Mueller wins the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her collection Alive Together: New and Selected Poems.

Martina Hingis of Switzerland wins the women's competition in the Australian Open. At 16, she is the youngest woman to win a grand-slam tennis tournament in 110 years.

Anna Lelkes, a harpist, becomes the first official female member of the Vienna Philharmonic after the orchestra votes to end its all-male policy.

U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Claudia Kennedy is promoted to lieutenant general, making her the first female three-star general.

Alexis Herman is confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Secretary of Labor.

Pat Henry of Bloomington, Ill., becomes the first American woman to sail solo around the world.

Twenty-two British women on a relay expedition reach the North Pole, the first all-female group to do so.

The eight-team Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) debuts.

Mary McAleese becomes the second woman in a row to be elected President of Ireland.

Bobbi McCaughey gives birth to septuplets in Iowa; the medical team that oversaw the pregnancy and delivery is headed by two female physicians.

Jenny Shipley is sworn in as Prime Minister of New Zealand, the first woman to occupy the post.

1998

Women's ice hockey teams compete for the first time at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. The U.S. Women's Hockey Team wins the gold medal.

American Tara Lipinski becomes the youngest woman to win an Olympic figure-skating title when she wins the gold medal at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.

General Motors and Saturn Corp. officials announce that Cynthia M. Trudell will become Saturn's new president and the first woman to head a U.S. car company on January 1, 1999.

The U.S. Senate confirms the appointment of Dr. Jane Henney as the new Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), making her the first woman to head the organization.

Organizers announce that a museum with a collection dedicated to the achievements of women will open in Dallas, Tex. in 2000.

The all-woman music festival Lillith Fair grosses $28.3 million, making it one of the most successful musical tours of the 1998 season.

1999

Shaikh Jabir As-Sabah, the Kuwaiti Amir, reinstates women's right to participate in the democratic process in Kuwait, where for many years only men had the right to participate in politics.

Sources:
Chronology of Women Worldwide, Gale.
Women's Firsts, Gale.
Women's Chronology, Gale.