From the Haudenosaunee women who successfully challenged warfare in the 17th century, to today’s feminist organizers defending democracy, reproductive freedom and civil rights, the struggle for women’s equality has never been a straight line. It is a story of persistence, resistance and collective action spanning centuries.
Compiled by editors at Ms. and researchers from the National Women’s History Alliance, the timeline below traces the interconnected histories of feminism, abolition, labor organizing, civil rights, reproductive justice, LGBTQ+ liberation and democratic participation. No timeline can fully capture more than 400 years of feminist history, let alone every movement, leader, victory and setback that has shaped the ongoing fight for equality. Rather than offering a comprehensive account, this chronology highlights pivotal moments and turning points that help tell the story of how women have expanded the boundaries of freedom, democracy and human rights in the United States and beyond.
The timeline is part of Ms. magazine’s FEMINIST 250: Founding Feminists project, a multimedia essay series marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence by examining the women and feminist movements that have worked to make the nation’s founding promises more fully realized. Through reported features, essays, interviews and historical analysis, FEMINIST 250 explores not only where we have been, but where we must go next to achieve true equality.
FEMINIST 250’s Parts 2 and 3—Feminist Lessons and Feminist Futures—drop this month on MsMagazine.com.
This timeline was compiled with contributions from Ms. magazine editors and staff and researchers from the National Women’s History Alliance.
Before & During the Age of Revolutions
1600
Haudenosaunee women stage a women’s strike (or sex strike, according to some accounts) and gain veto powers over wars and conflicts. This is the first recognized women’s protest in North America.
1607
Jamestown, Va., is recognized as the first English settlement in North America, coming more than 40 years after the first Spanish settlement in North America. At Jamestown, Pocahontas, an Indigenous girl, mediates between the Algonquin and English settlers.
This era of exploration leads to pandemics wiping out Indigenous communities, thus creating demand for imported labor from the African continent through the transatlantic slave trade (ca.1518-1808).
1619
The White Lion arrives in Virginia, becoming the first slave-trading vessel to land on an English settlement in North America. The ship carries more than 20 captive Africans originating from the Ndongo region (present-day Angola), which is later ruled by Queen Nzinga (r.1624-1663) as she wars against the Portuguese to protect her people from the transatlantic slave trade.
1650
Anne Bradstreet becomes the first poet to publish a book of poetry in the American colonies with The Tenth Muse Sprung up in America, 30 years after Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts (1620).
1662
A Virginia slave law establishes hereditary slavery in North America, stating that all children born to an enslaved woman would “follow the condition of the mother.”
1692
The Salem Witch Trials in the Massachusetts Bay Colony set off widespread accusations of witchcraft against mostly women. This moral panic among Puritans has its roots in Europe, where mostly women, accused of witchcraft, were often burned at the stake. In all, 19 people (14 of them women) are hanged during the Salem trials.
1730s-1740s
The first great religious awakening in America takes place, which personalizes ideas of salvation and spiritual connections with the divine. This movement plants early seeds of antislavery and feminist sentiments and other ideas of equality.
1773
Phillis Wheatley is the first African American to publish a book of poetry with Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral.
1776
The United States forms as a republic during the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) with the Declaration of Independence, which states that “all men are created equal.”
Abigail Adams pens her letter to her husband John Adams beseeching him to “remember the ladies” warning that “all Men would be tyrants if they could” and to “not put unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands” ahead of his attendance at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia.
1791
Abolitionist feminists Olympe de Gouges and Mary Wollstonecraft write their respective manifestos: Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen and A Vindication of the Rights of Women.
1808
The United States abolishes the transatlantic slave trade, which leads to further reliance on hereditary slavery among the enslaved communities already here in the U.S.
The First Wave of Feminism
1831
William Lloyd Garrison launches The Liberator, which platforms abolitionists, including a free African American woman Maria W. Stewart, who becomes the first American-born woman to speak in public against slavery and for women’s rights.
In August of 1831, Nat Turner leads an enslaved uprising in Southampton, Va. The aftermath results in more restrictive laws against enslaved communities.
1832-1833
More women abolitionists follow in Stewart’s footsteps by speaking out against slavery and forming female anti-slavery societies.
1840
Lucretia Mott helps to stage a walkout at the World Antislavery Convention in London when women are prevented from speaking in public.
1848
In July, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organize the first women’s rights convention in the U.S., in Seneca Falls, N.Y. An announcement in the Seneca County Courier calls for “A convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of women.” There, they write The Declaration of Sentiments, enumerating areas of life where women are treated unjustly and setting forth demands for women’s rights, including the right to own property, seek education and vote.
The debate over women’s suffrage grows heated, only to be quelled by Frederick Douglass, the noted Black abolitionist and former slave, who argues, “Suffrage is the power to choose rulers and make laws and the right by which all others are secured.”
1849-1851
Harriet Tubman self-emancipates from slavery in the fall of 1849 before she begins her heroic work on the Underground Railroad for the next decade.
In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Law goes into effect, empowering enslavers to reclaim freedom seekers residing in free states.
In 1851, Sojourner Truth delivers her famous speech at a women’s rights convention in Akron, Ohio, more widely known as “Ar’n’t I a Woman?” (she likely never said those exact words).
1857
The first organized march by women takes place among textile workers in New York City on March 8, with demands for shorter workdays and fair wages. March 8 will later be commemorated as International Women’s Day.
1861-1865
The U.S. Civil War takes place, culminating with the abolition of slavery in 1865, outlawed in the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865.
1869
The women’s suffrage movement splits over the 15th Amendment, which extends voting rights to Black men while excluding women of all races. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony lead the charge against the 15th while Lucy Stone leads the movement in support of it, hoping to eventually expand to women’s suffrage. The amendment comes after the 14th Amendment (1868) grants birthright citizenship and equal protection under the law to the newly freed African American community.
1872
Victoria Woodhull becomes the first woman to run for president of the United States.
1873
The Comstock Law goes into effect during widespread efforts to outlaw abortion and replace midwifery with gynecological medicine (excluding women practitioners); the law prohibits the distribution by mail of birth control, sex education and pornographic materials.
1875
The Page Act bans Chinese women from entering the U.S., on suspicions of prostitution, becoming the first federal law to ban a national group based on race and gender; this becomes the blueprint used to issue the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882.
1876
On July 4, during the Centennial Celebration of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia, Susan B. Anthony leads members of the National Women’s Suffrage Association in a women’s protest at Independence Hall, where they present the Declaration of the Rights of Women of the United States.
1893
Sophia Hayden, who became the first woman to graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a degree in architecture, designs the Women’s Building for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, which commemorates the 400th anniversary of the Columbus expedition. Journalist and anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells helps to organize a boycott of the World’s Fair, due to its overall exclusion of African Americans.
1895
Queen Lili‘uokalani becomes the last sovereign monarch in Hawaii when she is forced from the throne during her peaceful resistance to the annexation of Hawaii.
1896
The Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson legalizes racial segregation—also known as “Jim Crow”—in Southern states. In the wake of this decision, various Black women gather to address their rights at the founding convention of the National Association of Colored Women.
1911-1912
On March 25, 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City results in the deaths of 146 garment workers (123 of them young women who are mostly Jewish and Italian immigrants). The unsafe working conditions causing the tragedy prompt widespread outrage, which leads to women workers organizing the Bread and Roses strike the following year; approximately 25,000 textile workers (mostly women) stage a labor walkout in January 1912 in Lawrence, Mass.
1913
Alice Paul organizes the National Women’s March for Suffrage in Washington, D.C., on March 3.
Harriet Tubman, dying a week later on March 10, delivers this message: “Tell the women to stand together for God will not forsake us!” The women, however, do not stand together, as Black suffragists led by Ida B. Wells-Barnett refuse instructions to walk in the back of a segregated parade.
1916
Margaret Sanger, a public health nurse, initiates the birth control movement just as the suffrage drive was nearing victory and spreading the conviction that meaningful freedom for women meant the ability to decide whether they would become mothers. Jeanette Rankin becomes the first woman elected to Congress in the House of Representatives.
1920
Finally, after a 72-year, hard-fought campaign that included thousands of activists, ingenious strategies to outwit opponents and make the most of limited resources, the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified, guaranteeing women the right to vote.
The Second Wave of Feminism
1920
The Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor was established to gather information about the situation of women at work and to advocate for changes it found were needed.
1923
Alice Paul, who led the National Woman’s Party, drafted an Equal Rights Amendment for the U.S. Constitution to ensure that “Men and women have equal rights throughout the United States.”
1948
The United Nations—in response to the genocide committed during World War II (1939-1945)—drafts the Universal Declaration of Human Rights under the leadership of former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Roosevelt consults with Mary McLeod Bethune, the African American civil rights leader and educator who ensures that the Declaration addresses both race and gender equality.
1954
The Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education overturns Plessy v. Ferguson. The defense used by the NAACP legal team, led by Thurgood Marshall (future Supreme Court justice), is inspired by a paper written by legal scholar Pauli Murray, who challenges legal segregation through the 13th and 14th Amendments. Trailblazing lawyer Constance Baker Motley is recognized for writing the original complaint and takes the lead in subsequent legal efforts to desegregate schools across the South.
1955
Claudette Colvin is arrested on March 2 for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Ala.
That summer, Mamie Till-Mobley insists on an open casket funeral in Chicago after her son Emmett Till is brutally lynched in Mississippi, which shocks the nation.
Rosa Parks is arrested on Dec. 1 for also refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus. Her arrest prompts an organized boycott by the Women’s Political Council in Montgomery, which catapults Martin Luther King, Jr. into leadership. The bus boycott lasts 381 days.
1961
With the encouragement of Esther Peterson, the director of the Department of Labor Women’s Bureau, President Kennedy convenes a Commission on the Status of Women, naming Eleanor Roosevelt as its chair. The report issued by the commission in 1963 documents discrimination against women in virtually every area of American life. State and local governments quickly follow suit and establish their own commissions to research conditions and recommend changes.
1963
Betty Friedan publishes The Feminine Mystique.
The March on Washington for Civil Rights takes place on Aug. 28.
A month later, white supremacists bomb the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., killing four girls: Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Carol Denise McNair. The tragedy inspires protest art and music, including Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam.”
President John F. Kennedy is assassinated on Nov. 22.
1964
With massive pressure from the Civil Rights Movement, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passes and is signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson. The act, the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, prohibits race discrimination in public places and provides for the integration of schools and other public facilities. Title VII of the Act prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of sex as well as race, religion and national origin. The category “sex” is included as a last-ditch effort by Southern senators to kill the bill, but it passes nevertheless. With its passage, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is established to investigate discrimination complaints.
Fannie Lou Hamer emerges as a leader during the Democratic National Convention where she gives testimony about her struggles to vote.
Patsy Mink becomes the first Asian American woman and woman of color elected to Congress in the House of Representatives.
1965
In February, Malcolm X is assassinated.
In March, Martin Luther King Jr. leads civil rights activists in a march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. for voting rights amid violent confrontations with state police.
In August, the Voting Rights Act is passed, which removes barriers to voting in Southern states.
In October, nationality quotas are removed with the overhaul of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
1966
At the third annual conference of Commissions on the Status of Women, some 15-20 conference participants, frustrated by the lack of enforcement action on sex discrimination by the EEOC, met in the hotel room of Betty Friedan and decided to form an organization to speak on behalf of women in the way civil rights groups had done for Blacks.
The National Organization for Women (NOW) is founded by Friedan, Pauli Murray, Catherine Conroy, Inka O’Hanrahan, Rosalind Loring, Mary Eastwood, Dorothy Haener and Kay Clarenbach. The new organization’s statement of purpose: “to take action to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, assuming all the privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men.”
1968
Following the intensification of anti-war protests against the Vietnam War and the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, New York Radical Women, led by Robin Morgan, stage a protest against the Miss America pageant, which spotlights the women’s liberation movement. The first Miss Black America pageant launches under “Black is beautiful.”
Shirley Chisholm becomes the first Black woman elected to Congress in the House of Representatives.
1972
Gloria Steinem and a group of activists and writers launch Ms. magazine.
Shirley Chisholm becomes the first Black woman to run for president in a major political party.
In June, Title IX of the Education Codes of 1972—authored by Rep. Patsy Mink—passes, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education at institutions receiving federal funding, opening colleges and universities, graduate and professional schools to women. Athletics has probably been the most well-known impact of Title IX, leading to the rise in girls’ and women’s participation in sports.
The Equal Rights Amendment is passed by a two-thirds vote in Congress to enshrine within the U.S. Constitution that “equal rights under the law shall not be abridged or denied … on account of sex.” The proposed amendment is then sent to the states for ratification.
1973
The Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade legalizes abortion. In response, Congress passes the Helms Amendment, prohibiting U.S. international funding from being used for abortion.
A case brought by NOW reaches the Supreme Court, which declares sex-segregated job listings illegal.
1974
The Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which outlaws sex discrimination by creditors, passes.
1975
The United Nations declares the “Year of the Woman” and hosts the first of its World Conferences on Women in Mexico City in June, bringing together not only official representatives of participating governments, but thousands of women’s rights advocates and NGOs from around the world.
1980
Eleanor Smeal, then president of NOW, identifies and names the gender gap, the measurable difference between the electoral preferences of women and men, giving women’s votes new weight in the outcome of elections.
1981
The inauguration of President Ronald Reagan launches a politically reactionary era in the U.S. Sandra Day O’Connor becomes the first woman to be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Black feminists Audre Lorde and Barbara Smith create the Kitchen Table Women of Color Press to independently publish works by feminists of color. They contribute to the growth of women’s studies during this decade.
1984
Reagan enacts the global gag rule prohibiting organizations receiving funding from the U.S. from even mentioning abortion.
Geraldine Ferraro becomes the first woman candidate for vice-president on a major party ticket.
1987
The Feminist Majority is founded by Eleanor Smeal, Peg Yorkin, Katherine Spillar, Toni Carabillo and Judith Meuli and is dedicated to women’s equality, especially in the arena of politics.
The Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987 is passed overturning the 1984 Supreme Court decision in Grove City College v. Bell, to clarify that educational entities receiving federal funds must comply with anti-sex-discrimination provisions of Title IX in all of their operations, not just in the program or activity that received the funding.
1991
The Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas congressional hearings raise the issue of sexual harassment (both intra-racially and in general) in the public sphere. The hearings highlight its personal impact but does not stop the eventual appointment of Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court. Kimberlé Crenshaw, who coined the terms intersectionality and critical race theory in 1989, serves as a legal consultant for Hill’s defense team.
1992
Widespread anger over the treatment of Anita Hill by an all-male Senate Judiciary Committee, boosts women’s campaigns for Congress; at the time, there were just two women in the Senate and 47 in the House. The elections nearly doubled the number of women in the House and increased the number of women in the Senate to five. Among the newly elected senators are Carol Moseley Braun, the first Black woman elected to the U.S. Senate.
1993
In January, Maya Angelou becomes the first African American and woman to deliver a poem at a presidential inauguration when President Bill Clinton is sworn in as the 42nd president of the United States.
Later in the year, Toni Morrison becomes the first African American of any gender to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
1994
The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) is signed into law, dramatically increasing funding for prevention and including Section 3 that allows a survivor of gender-based violence to sue her attacker in civil court for damages.
Following the escalation of antiabortion extremist violence, including the murder of Dr. David Gunn, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act is passed and signed into law, providing for the first time, federal jurisdiction to address this domestic terrorism.
1995
First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton declares, “Women’s rights are human rights,” at the fourth U.N. World Conference on Women in Beijing, China.
1997
Madeleine Albright becomes the first woman secretary of state during President Clinton’s second term and declares the Taliban’s treatment of women under its gender apartheid system as “criminal, not cultural.”
Civil rights feminist activist Loretta Ross spearheads efforts to assemble 18 reproductive health organizations by women of color into the SisterSong Reproductive Justice Collective.
Into the Present
2000
The Color of Violence: Violence Against Women of Color Conference is held in April, which platforms intersectional analyses and grassroots strategies tackling gendered violence in relation to racism, state violence and militarism. From this event, the INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence network is launched.
After a 12-year campaign led by feminists, the FDA finally approves the drug mifepristone for use in early abortion in the U.S. (By 2024, the medication would account for more than 60 percent of all abortions in the U.S.)
2004
In April, over 1 million women and men marched in Washington D.C. in the March for Women’s Lives, protesting the increasing restrictions on access to abortion, becoming the largest march in U.S. history at that time.
2005
Condoleezza Rice becomes the first African American woman secretary of state under President George W. Bush.
2008
Barack Obama makes history when he is elected as the 44th and first Black president of the United States.
Nancy Pelosi becomes the first woman speaker of the House of Representatives.
By the spring of 2010, Obama had ended the global gag rule, expanded Medicaid funding, increased family planning funding, signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law, and appointed Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. The Affordable Care Act would end sex discriminatory insurance practices.
2011-2013
The expansion of social media on the Internet leads to the global reach of social movements: including Slut Walk, #BlackLivesMatter (launched by Alicia Garza, Patrice Cullors and Ayo Tometi) and #SayHerName (launched by Kimberlé Crenshaw) on Twitter (now X).
In 2013, the Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder weakens the Voting Rights Act.
2015
The Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges legalizes same-sex marriage.
Women on the 20 grassroots campaign pushes for the placement of a woman on $20 U.S. currency, which leads to the selection of Harriet Tubman for the honor.
2016
The Obama administration officially selects Harriet Tubman for a future appearance on $20 currency.
Hillary Rodham Clinton makes history as the first woman to receive the nomination for president of a major political party in the United States and the first woman to win the popular vote, even though she is not elected to the presidency.
2017
Clinton’s loss of the presidential election against an openly sexist campaign run by Donald J. Trump prompts the Women’s March in January; nearly 6 million participate in marches organized in Washington, D.C., and in every state and on every continent.
In August, pop star Taylor Swift wins a lawsuit against her groper, which takes place two months before Hollywood actors break their silence about sexual assault by movie producer Harvey Weinstein. This sets off the Me Too movement, first launched on Twitter (now X) as #MeToo. Leaders of the movement include actor Alyssa Milano and activist Tarana Burke, who launched an earlier iteration of the movement in 2006.
2020
The COVID-19 pandemic triggers a worldwide lockdown. Women scientists, including Katalin Kariko (awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine in 2023) and Kizzmekia Corbett-Helaire, are instrumental in helping to develop the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.
In January, Virginia becomes the 38th and final state needed to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, following ratification votes in Nevada in 2017 and Illinois in 2019; however, Trump’s Department of Justice blocks the Amendment’s certification.
2021
Kamala Harris makes history as the first woman vice president of the United States.
In August, President Joe Biden ends the war in Afghanistan, and the Taliban immediately regains power.
2022
In April, Ketanji Brown Jackson becomes the first African American woman appointed to the Supreme Court.
In June, the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturns Roe v. Wade, removing federal protections for abortion access. In state after state, voters reject antiabortion ballot measures and support laws that enshrine reproductive rights in state constitutions.
On Sept. 16, the death of Mahsa “Jina” Amini in police custody ignites the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in Iran.
2024
Vice President Kamala Harris makes history as the first woman of color to receive the Democratic Party nomination for president of the United States. Like Hilary Clinton, she too loses to President Trump, even though she receives 75 million votes.
Into the Future
2025-Present
With shocking speed, the Trump administration curtails enforcement of nondiscrimination laws and attacks efforts in the public and private sectors to create more diverse workforces. It targets women’s and gender studies programs and the teaching of critical race theory, guts key federal programs—including Medicaid and SNAP—that women disproportionately rely on, cuts funding for contraception and women’s health research, threatens access to medication abortion, and pursues voting restrictions that, if enacted, disproportionately burden women voters.
Yet resistance—often led by women—is immediate and fierce, with no signs of letting up. Women’s votes continue to prove decisive in state and local elections, helping defeat anti-women’s-rights candidates and elect feminist leaders. As the nation marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the work of building a more perfect union continues.
You may also like: Founding Feminist series editor Janell Hobson joined On the Issues with host and Ms. Studios executive producer Michele Goodwin to discuss what America’s 250th anniversary means for women and the feminist agenda.
