America250 — 250 years since 1776. Explore two and a half centuries of American history. Start the tour

#Women

56 entries

People (37)

First Lady, political advisor, and the founding era's most insistent voice for women's rights

Aretha Franklin

The voice that carried the church into American popular music, 1942-2018

The Empress of the Blues and the highest-paid Black entertainer of the 1920s, 1894-1937

Author of The Feminine Mystique and Founder of Second-Wave Feminism, 1921–2006

Billie Jean King

The tennis champion who won the "Battle of the Sexes" and equal pay

Civil War nurse and founder of the American Red Cross

The First Lady who saved Washington's portrait and defined the social power of the presidency

Reformer who transformed the treatment of the mentally ill in America

Documentary Photographer Who Gave the Depression a Human Face, 1895–1965

Eleanor Roosevelt

First Lady, diplomat, and the human rights conscience of the 20th century

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Suffragist, abolitionist, and primary architect of the American women's rights movement

Emily Dickinson

Reclusive genius whose poetry redefined American literature — mostly after her death

The poet whose words gave the Statue of Liberty its voice

Fannie Lou Hamer

Sharecropper, Voting Rights Activist, and Voice of the Mississippi Freedom Movement, 1917–1977

Georgia O'Keeffe

Skyscrapers, flowers, and the New Mexico desert, 1887-1986

Journalist and activist who became the defining public voice of second-wave American feminism

Pioneer of computer programming and inventor of the first compiler

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Author of Uncle Tom's Cabin and the novelist who sharpened the nation's conscience on slavery

Abolitionist, Union spy, and conductor of the Underground Railroad

Deaf-blind author and activist whose radicalism the 20th century spent decades trying to forget

Journalist, anti-lynching crusader, and one of the founders of the NAACP

Investigative Journalist Who Broke Standard Oil, 1857–1944

First Lady whose grace under catastrophe defined a generation's image of the American presidency

Social reformer, Nobel laureate, and founder of Hull House

Madam C.J. Walker

The washerwoman who built a beauty empire and a Black fortune

Margaret Sanger

Birth control pioneer whose crusade for reproductive rights is inseparable from her eugenicist ideology

Martha Washington

The first First Lady — a wealthy widow who built the presidency alongside her husband

The fearless organizer once called "the most dangerous woman in America"

Phyllis Schlafly

The conservative organizer who stopped the Equal Rights Amendment

Marine Biologist and Author Whose Silent Spring Launched the Environmental Movement, 1907–1964

Civil rights activist whose 1955 arrest sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Supreme Court Justice and architect of American gender equality law, 1993–2020

Shoshone guide and interpreter whose knowledge made the Corps of Discovery possible

The first American woman in space

Sandra Day O'Connor

First woman to serve on the Supreme Court, 1981–2006

Sojourner Truth

Abolitionist, suffragist, and orator who escaped slavery to become its most forceful living refutation

Susan B. Anthony

The suffragist whose half-century of organizing made the 19th Amendment possible

Events (6)

Rosie the Riveter

The wartime icon of the women who built America's arsenal

Seneca Falls Convention

The 1848 gathering that launched the organized American women's rights movement

The #MeToo Movement

The 2017 reckoning over sexual harassment and assault

Swanson's 1953 aluminum tray and the rearranged American evening

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

The 1911 factory disaster that transformed American labor law

Women's Suffrage Movement

The seven-decade campaign that won American women the right to vote in 1920

Documents (5)

Ain't I a Woman?

Sojourner Truth's case for equal rights, 1851

Equal Rights Amendment

The Proposed Constitutional Amendment for Gender Equality, 1923–Present

Nineteenth Amendment

The Constitutional Amendment That Gave Women the Right to Vote, 1920

The 1973 Supreme Court decision that made abortion a constitutional right — and its 2022 reversal

The 1972 law that transformed women's sports and education

Concepts (3)

Temperance Movement

The campaign against alcohol that reshaped American social and political life

Women's Liberation Movement

The feminist uprising of the 1960s and '70s that transformed American law and culture

The two-century fight for equality — the vote, the workplace, and the body

Organizations (4)

Jane Addams's settlement house that pioneered American social work, 1889

Planned Parenthood

The reproductive-health provider at the center of the abortion battle, 1916

The American Red Cross

Clara Barton's humanitarian corps for war and disaster, founded 1881

The National Organization for Women

The group that drove the fight for women's equality, founded 1966

Technology (1)

The Birth Control Pill

The oral contraceptive, approved for contraception in 1960

All Tags

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