Major Achievements for Women in the United States
EARLY MILESTONES
Oct. 10, 1911: California becomes the sixth state in the nation to grant women full voting rights, nine years before the 19th Amendment extends that right nationwide. The campaign is driven by a coalition of suffragists, labor organizers, and progressive reformers who canvass every county in the state. California’s victory energizes the national suffrage movement and demonstrates that western states can lead on women’s political equality.
November 1918: Grace S. Dorris, Esto B. Broughton, Anna L. Saylor, and Elizabeth Hughes become the first four women elected to the California State Assembly, making California one of the earliest states to send women to its legislature — and doing so before the 19th Amendment grants women nationwide voting rights.
Aug. 18, 1920: Ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is completed, declaring “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” It is nicknamed “The Susan B. Anthony Amendment” in honor of her work on behalf of women’s suffrage.
1930S
May 20–21, 1932: Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman, and second pilot ever (Charles Lindbergh was first) to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic.
1940S
February 16, 1945: The Alaska Equal Rights Act is signed into law. The act is the first state or territorial anti-discrimination law enacted in the United States in the 20th century. Elizabeth Peratrovich, a Tlingit woman who was Grand President of the Alaska Native Sisterhood, spearheaded the effort to end discrimination against Alaska Natives and other non-white residents.
1950S
Dec. 1, 1955: Black seamstress Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Ala. The move helps launch the civil rights movement.
1960S
May 9, 1960: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves the first commercially produced birth control pill in the world, allowing women to control when and if they have children. Margaret Sanger initially commissioned “the pill” with funding from heiress Katherine McCormick.
June 10, 1963: President John F. Kennedy signs into law the Equal Pay Act, prohibiting sex-based wage discrimination between men and women performing the same job in the same workplace.
July 2, 1964: President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act into law; Title VII bans employment discrimination based on race, religion, national origin or sex.
June 30, 1966: Betty Friedan, author of 1963’s The Feminine Mystique, helps found the National Organization for Women (NOW), using, as the organization now states, “grassroots activism to promote feminist ideals, lead societal change, eliminate discrimination, and achieve and protect the equal rights of all women and girls in all aspects of social, political, and economic life.”
1966: Yvonne Brathwaite Burke becomes the first African American woman elected to the California State Legislature, representing a Los Angeles district in the Assembly. She goes on to become the first Black woman from California elected to the U.S. Congress (1973) and, in 1979, the first woman and African American to serve on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.
1970S
June 23, 1972: Title IX of the Education Amendments is signed into law by President Richard Nixon. It states, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
Jan. 22, 1973: In its landmark 7–2 Roe v. Wade decision, the U.S. Supreme Court declares that the Constitution protects a woman’s legal right to an abortion. In June 2022, the Supreme Court overturned the ruling.
Sept. 20, 1973: In “The Battle of the Sexes,” tennis great Billie Jean King beats Bobby Riggs in straight sets during an exhibition match aired on primetime TV and drawing 90 million viewers. “I thought it would set us back 50 years if I didn’t win that match,” King says after the match. “It would ruin the women’s [tennis] tour and affect all women’s self-esteem.”
December 4, 1978: Dianne Feinstein becomes the first woman to serve as Mayor of San Francisco, stepping into the role as President of the Board of Supervisors following the assassination of Mayor George Moscone. She serves until 1988, earning a national reputation as a steady and effective executive and laying the groundwork for a historic U.S. Senate career.
1980S
July 7, 1981: Sandra Day O’Connor is sworn in as the first woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, after being nominated by President Ronald Reagan. She retires in 2006, after serving for 24 years.
June 18, 1983: Flying on the Space Shuttle Challenger, Sally Ride — a Los Angeles native and Stanford University physicist — becomes the first American woman in space and, at 32, the youngest American astronaut to reach orbit. Ride later founds Sally Ride Science to inspire young people, especially girls, to pursue careers in science and math, and serves as Director of the California Space Science Institute until her death in 2012.
July 12, 1984: Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale names U.S. Rep. Geraldine Ferraro (N.Y.) as his running mate, tapping her to be the first woman vice president nominee by a major party.
1990S
November 3, 1992: In what becomes known as the “Year of the Woman,” California makes history as the first state in the nation to send two women to the U.S. Senate simultaneously. Dianne Feinstein — the former Mayor of San Francisco — and Barbara Boxer are both elected to the Senate, becoming the first women ever to represent California in the upper chamber. Their dual election more than doubles the number of women in the U.S. Senate and signals a turning point in women’s political power nationwide.
March 12, 1993: Nominated by President Bill Clinton, Janet Reno is sworn in as the first female attorney general of the United States.
Sept. 13, 1994: Clinton signs the Violence Against Women Act as part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, providing funding for programs that help victims of domestic violence, rape, sexual assault, stalking and other gender-related violence.
Jan. 23, 1997: Also nominated by President Clinton, Madeleine Albright is sworn in as the nation’s first female secretary of state.
2000S
Jan. 4, 2007: U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — a San Francisco native — becomes the first female speaker of the House, placing her second in the line of presidential succession. “For our daughters and granddaughters, today we have broken the marble ceiling,” Pelosi says at her swearing-in. In 2019, she reclaims the title, becoming the first lawmaker to hold the office two times in more than 50 years.
2010S
Jan. 24, 2013: The U.S. military removes a ban against women serving in direct ground combat positions.
July 26, 2016: Hillary Clinton becomes the first woman to receive a presidential nomination from a major political party. During her speech at the Democratic National Convention, she says, “Standing here as my mother’s daughter, and my daughter’s mother, I’m so happy this day has come.”
January 2017: Kamala Harris is sworn in as a United States Senator from California, becoming the second Black woman and first South Asian American woman ever elected to the U.S. Senate. As California’s former Attorney General — where she made history as the first woman, first Black American, and first Asian American to hold that office — Harris brings a trailblazing record to the national stage.
2020S
January 20, 2021: Kamala Harris — an Oakland native and the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants — is sworn in as the first woman and first woman of color vice president of the United States. “While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last,” Harris says after getting elected in November. Harris had served as California’s first female, first Black, and first Asian American attorney general before winning election to the U.S. Senate in 2016. She made her own presidential bid before being selected by former Vice President Joe Biden as his running mate. In 2024, she became the Democratic candidate for president after Biden withdrew from the race, but lost the general election to Donald Trump.
April 7, 2022: The U.S. Senate confirms Ketanji Brown Jackson as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court by a vote of 53–47, making her the first Black woman — and the first former federal public defender — ever to serve on the nation’s highest court. She is sworn in on June 30, 2022. “It has taken 232 years and 115 prior appointments for a Black woman to be selected to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States, but we’ve made it,” Jackson says. “All of us.”
June 24, 2022: The U.S. Supreme Court issues its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning Roe v. Wade and eliminating the federal constitutional right to abortion that had stood for nearly 50 years. The decision returns authority to regulate abortion to individual states. California moves swiftly to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution, with voters approving Proposition 1 in November 2022 to add an explicit right to abortion and contraception to California’s governing document.
November 2022: California voters elect the most diverse state Legislature in history, with a record 50 of 120 members being women. Women of color make up a majority of those female lawmakers. California also becomes the first state in the nation to achieve gender parity among LGBTQ+ legislators, with LGBTQ+ members comprising 10 percent of the Legislature — matching estimates of the state’s overall LGBTQ+ population.
January 2, 2023: Patricia Guerrero is sworn in as the 29th Chief Justice of California, becoming the first Latina — and only the third woman — ever to lead the state’s highest court. The daughter of Mexican immigrants who grew up in California’s Imperial Valley, Guerrero was first appointed to the California Supreme Court by Governor Gavin Newsom in March 2022. Nominated for Chief Justice in August, she was confirmed and overwhelmingly approved by voters. “I never dreamed I would be here today,” Guerrero says at her swearing-in. “I hope that my story and the story of my parents will serve as an example.”
August 2024: Vice President Kamala Harris — a California native born in Oakland — accepts the Democratic presidential nomination, becoming the first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to be nominated for president by a major American political party. Harris loses the November 2024 general election to Donald Trump, but her candidacy shatters another historic barrier and cements her place in the record of women’s political achievement.
November 2024: Following the general elections, the California State Senate achieves majority-female representation for the first time in State history. The full Legislature reaches near-parity at 49 percent women — a doubling of female representation in less than a decade — with 36 of 55 female members being women of color. Nationally, Sarah McBride of Delaware becomes the first openly transgender person elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, while Angela Alsobrooks becomes the first Black woman elected to the U.S. Senate from Maryland, and Lisa Blunt Rochester becomes the first Black woman ever to represent Delaware in the Senate.
Sources
History.com Women’s History Timeline; California Secretary of State; California Courts Newsroom; Office of the Governor of California; CalMatters; Jewish Women’s Archive; NPR; Wikipedia List of American Women’s Firsts; Close the Gap California.