Landmarks for Women

1877 - Helen Magill is the first woman to receive a doctorate at a US school - a PhD in Greek from Boston University.

1879 - Mary Baker Eddy founds the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston.

First woman lawyer is admitted to practice before the US Supreme Court.

1892 - The University of Kansas offers an early example of a women's studies course through the sociology department, 'Status of Women in the United States.'

1895 - Elizabeth Cady Stanton publishes the first volume of 'The Woman's Bible,' in which she revises biblical passages that degrade women.

1908 - US Supreme Court declares unconstitutional protective legislation for women workers.

1912 - Juliette Gordon Low founds what will become the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A.

1916 - Margaret Sanger and her sister, Ethel Byrne, open the first US birth-control clinic, in New York. It is shut down 10 days later. The women are imprisoned.

1917 - Jeanette Rankin of Montana becomes the first woman elected to the US Congress.

1920 - Nineteenth Amendment is ratified, guaranteeing women the right to vote.

1924 - Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming becomes the first woman elected governor of a state.

1926 - Bertha Knight Landes becomes the first woman elected mayor of a sizable US city (Seattle).

1928 - The Berkshire Conference on the History of Women is organized by women as women's history is ignored by the American Historical Association.

1933 - Frances Perkins becomes the first woman to serve in a presidential Cabinet, serving as secretary of Labor in the Roosevelt administration.

1936 - Decision in US v. One Package overturns

the Comstock Law, which had classified

birth-control information as obscene. Contraceptive devices can be imported into the US.