| 1923 | 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. 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 | Women compete for the first time in Olympic field events. U.S. anthropologist Margaret Mead publishes Coming of Age in Samoa. |
| 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. |
| 1945 | Fashion magazine Elle is founded. |
| 1953 | Oveta Culp Hobby became the first secretary of the new Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. This was her second time to organize a new branch of the government. |
| 1959 | Shirley Muldowney began her professional drag racing career. |
| 1966 | National Organization for Women (NOW) is founded in the United States. |
| 1969 | Shirley Chisholm, of New York, becomes the first African-American woman in Congress. Her motto is, “Unbought and unbossed.” She served in the U.S. House of Representatives for 14 years. |
| 1976 | Sarah Caldwell becomes the first woman to conduct at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House. |
| 1978 | Janet Guthrie qualifies for the Indianapolis 500 for a second time and finished the race in 8th position. | 1979 | Patricia Robert Harris was appointed Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare making her the first African American woman to hold a cabinet post. |
| 1981 | Sandra Day O'Connor appointed first woman U.S. Supreme Court Justice. |