A Timeline of Women’s Rights in the USA

 

By Tim Lambert

Women’s Rights in the 19th Century

1815 American campaigner for women’s rights Elizabeth Cady Stanton is born

1820 American campaigner for women’s rights Susan B Anthony is born

1839 Mississippi is the first state to allow married women to own property

1841 In the USA three women gain bachelor degrees from Oberlin College. They are the first women in the USA to gain bachelor degrees.

1848 Maria Mitchell becomes the first woman member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The first convention on women’s rights in the USA is held at Seneca Falls, New York. About 300 women and men attend. Finally, 68 women and 32 men sign the Declaration of Sentiments calling for equal rights for women.

1849 Elizabeth Blackwell becomes the first woman in the USA to qualify as a doctor

1866 Lucy Hobbs Taylor becomes the first American woman to graduate from a dental college

1869 The territory of Wyoming gives women the right to vote

1870 Ada Kepley becomes the first American woman to graduate from law school. In Utah, women are given the right to vote. (The right is revoked in 1887 but restored in 1896).

1872 Victoria Woodhull becomes the first woman to run for president of the USA

1877 Helen Magill White becomes the first woman in the USA to gain a PhD

1878 Clara Shortridge Foltz is the first woman admitted to the California Bar

1887 Susanna Salter becomes the first woman mayor in the USA

1893 Men in Colorado vote in a referendum to allow women to vote

1896 In Idaho and Utah women get the right to vote. Martha Hughes Cannon is elected to the Utah State Senate. She is the first woman state senator.

Women’s Rights in the 20th Century

1905 Nora Stanton Blatch Barney becomes the first woman member of the American Society of Civil Engineers

1910 The first policewoman begins duty in Los Angeles. Women in Washington state, USA get the right to vote.

1911 Women in California get the right to vote

1912 Women in Oregon, Kansas, and Arizona get the right to vote

1914 Women in Montana and Nevada are allowed to vote

1916 Jeanette Rankin becomes the woman elected to the US Congress (The House of Representatives)

1917 Women in New York State are allowed to vote

1918 Women in Oklahoma, Michigan, and South Dakota are allowed to vote.

1920 In the USA all white women get the right to vote. (In some states African American women (and men) were prevented from voting till the Voting Rights Act 1965).

1922 Rebecca Latimer Felton is appointed the first woman US senator

1925 Nellie Tayloe Ross becomes the first woman governor of a US state (Wyoming)

1932 Hattie Ophelia Caraway is the first woman elected to the US Senate

1933 Frances Perkins becomes the first woman appointed to a presidential cabinet. She was secretary of labor.

1963 The Equal Pay Act is passed. The new law makes it illegal to pay men and women different amounts for doing the same work.

1967 Muriel Siebert becomes the first woman to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. Kathrine Switzer becomes the first woman to run the Boston Marathon.

1977 Nancy Goorey becomes the first woman president of the American Dental Association

1981 Sandra Day O’Connor becomes the first woman judge on the US Supreme Court

1983 Sally Ride becomes the first American woman in space

1990 Antonia Novello becomes the first woman surgeon general of the USA

2007 Nancy Pelosi becomes the first woman speaker of the House of Representatives