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July 19-20, 1848: In the first women’s rights convention organized by women,

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Dec. 10, 1869: The legislature of the territory of Wyoming passes America’s first woman suffrage law, granting women the right to vote and hold office.

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May 10th, 1872: Victoria Woodhull was nominated for President of the United States by the newly formed Equal Rights Party. (not a major party)

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1887- Susana Salter was elected mayor of Argonia, Kansas- The first woman mayor in the country.

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April 2, 1917: Jeannette Rankin of Montana, a longtime activist with the National Woman Suffrage Association, is sworn in as the first woman elected to Congress as a member of the House of Representatives.

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October 3, 1922: Rebecca Latimer Felton of Georgia, the first woman to serve in the United States Senate.

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1925: Nellie Tayloe Ross, a Wyoming Democrat, became the nation's first woman governor

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July 7, 1981: Sandra Day O’Connor is sworn in by President Ronald Reagan as the first woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. She retires in 2006, after serving for 24 years.

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July 26, 2016: Hillary Clinton becomes the first woman to receive a presidential nomination from a major political party.

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January 20, 2021: Kamala Harris is sworn in as the first woman and first woman of color vice president of the United States.

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The Seneca Falls Convention is the most vital turning point in this movement because it started female representation in government.

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Women's history is full of trailblazers in the fight for equality in the United States. From Abigail Adams imploring her husband to "remember the ladies" when envisioning a government for the American colonies, to suffragists like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton fighting for women's right to vote, to the rise of feminism and Hillary Clinton becoming the first female nominee for president by a major political party, American women have long fought for equal footing throughout the nation's history.

And while some glass ceilings have been shattered (see: Title IX), others remain. But progress continues to be made. As Clinton said while accepting her nomination, "When there are no ceilings, the sky's the limit."

Below is a timeline of notable events in U.S. women's history.

Abigail Adams, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth

March 31, 1776: In a letter to her husband, Founding Father John Adams, future first lady Abigail Adams makes a plea to him and the Continental Congress to "remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation."

July 19-20, 1848: In the first women's rights convention organized by women, the Seneca Falls Convention is held in New York, with 300 attendees, including organizers Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. Sixty-eight women and 32 men (including Frederick Douglass) sign the Declaration of Sentiments, which sparked decades of activism, eventually leading to the passage of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote.
READ MORE: Why the 19th Amendment Did Not Guarantee All Women the Right to Vote
January 23, 1849: Elizabeth Blackwell becomes the first woman to graduate from medical school and become a doctor in the United States. Born in Bristol, England, she graduated from Geneva College in New York with the highest grades in her entire class.

May 29, 1851: A formerly enslaved worker turned abolitionist and women's rights activist, Sojourner Truth delivers her famous "Ain't I a Woman?" speech at the Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. "And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man-when I could get it-and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne 13 children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?"

Contemporaneous reports of Truth's speech did not include this slogan, and quoted Truth in standard English. In later years, this slogan was further distorted to "Ain't I a Woman?", reflecting the false belief that as a formerly enslaved woman, Truth would have had a Southern accent. Truth was, in fact, a New Yorker.
READ MORE: Early Women's Rights Activists Wanted Much More than Suffrage
Suffrage Movement, 19th Amendment

May 15, 1869: Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton found the National Woman Suffrage Association, which coordinated the national suffrage movement. In 1890, the group teamed with the American Woman Suffrage Association to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

October 16, 1916: Margaret Sanger opens the first birth control clinic in the United States. Located in Brownsville, Brooklyn, her clinic was deemed illegal under the "Comstock Laws" forbidding birth control, and the clinic was raided on October 26, 1916. When she had to close two additional times due to legal threats, she closed the clinic and eventually founded the American Birth Control League in 1921-the precursor to today's Planned Parenthood.

April 2, 1917: Jeannette Rankin of Montana, a longtime activist with the National Woman Suffrage Association, is sworn in as the first woman elected to Congress as a member of the House of Representatives.

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.

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.

Rosa Parks, Civil Rights, Equal Pay

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.

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."
READ MORE: Six Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement
Title IX, Battle of the Sexes

Jan. 22, 1973: In its landmark 7-2 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.

Sandra Day O'Connor, Sally Ride

July 7, 1981: Sandra Day O'Connor is sworn in by President Ronald Reagan as the first woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. She retires in 2006, after serving for 24 years.

June 18 1983: Flying on the Space Shuttle Challenger, Sally Ride becomes the first American woman in space.

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.

Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris

The daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, Harris served as California's first Black female attorney general and won election to the U.S. Senate in 2016. She made her own unsuccessful presidential bid before being selected by former vice president Joe Biden as his running mate.
READ MORE: 7 Women Leaders That Were Elected to Highest Office
Sources

Timeline of Legal History of Women in the United States, National Women's History Alliance

Seneca Falls Convention, Library of Congress

Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I A Woman?" Sojourner Truth Memorial

Woman Suffrage, National Geographic Society

Suffragists Unite: National American Woman Suffrage Association, National Women's History Museum

A record number of women will be serving in the new Congress. PEWResearch.org.

A List of Firsts for Women In This Year's Midterm Elections. NPR.org.

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

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From a plea to a founding father, to the suffragists to Title IX, to the first female political figures, women have blazed a steady trail towards equality in the United States. Explore famous firsts and figures in women's history with this timeline.

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Milestones for Women in American Politics

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Oskaloosa, Kansas became the first town in the United States known to have an all-woman government, with the mayor and entire council being female. The council included Mayor Mary D. Lowman, and Councilmembers Carrie Johnson, Sadie E. Balsley, Hanna P. Morse, Emma K. Hamilton,and Mittie Josephine Golden.

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Passed by Congress June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920, the 19th amendment granted women the right to vote.
The 19th amendment legally guarantees American women the right to vote. Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle-victory took decades of agitation and protest. Beginning in the mid-19th century, several generations of woman suffrage supporters lectured, wrote, marched, lobbied, and practiced civil disobedience to achieve what many Americans considered a radical change of the Constitution. Few early supporters lived to see final victory in 1920.

Beginning in the 1800s, women organized, petitioned, and picketed to win the right to vote, but it took them decades to accomplish their purpose. Between 1878, when the amendment was first introduced in Congress, and August 18, 1920, when it was ratified, champions of voting rights for women worked tirelessly, but strategies for achieving their goal varied. Some pursued a strategy of passing suffrage acts in each state-nine western states adopted woman suffrage legislation by 1912. Others challenged male-only voting laws in the courts. Some suffragists used more confrontational tactics such as picketing, silent vigils, and hunger strikes. Often supporters met fierce resistance. Opponents heckled, jailed, and sometimes physically abused them.

By 1916, almost all of the major suffrage organizations were united behind the goal of a constitutional amendment. When New York adopted woman suffrage in 1917 and President Wilson changed his position to support an amendment in 1918, the political balance began to shift.

On May 21, 1919, the House of Representatives passed the amendment, and 2 weeks later, the Senate followed. When Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the amendment on August 18, 1920, the amendment passed its final hurdle of obtaining the agreement of three-fourths of the states. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified the ratification on August 26, 1920, changing the face of the American electorate forever.

The campaign for woman suffrage was long, difficult, and sometimes dramatic; yet ratification did not ensure full enfranchisement. Decades of struggle to include African Americans and other minority women in the promise of voting rights remained. Many women remained unable to vote long into the 20th century because of discriminatory state voting laws.

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19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Women's Right to Vote (1920)

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EnlargeDownload Link Citation: Joint Resolution of Congress proposing a constitutional amendment extending the right of suffrage to women, approved June 4, 1919.; Ratified Amendments, 1795-1992; General Records of the United States Government; Record Group 11; National Archives.