1901
Scottish surgeon Elsie Maud Inglis, 37, opens an Edinburgh maternity hospital staffed entirely by women. She has been horrified both by the lack of proper maternity facilities and by her male colleagues’ prejudice against women physicians. (p. 360)
1902
Chicago glove maker Agnes Nestor helps organize the International Glove Workers Union (A.F. of L.) and founds Local #1 of the IGWU. (p. 362)

 

 1903
Marie Curie is the first woman awarded the Nobel Prize in physics December 10 with her husband Pierre. They isolated radium, the first radioactive element. (p. 366)

1905
A monograph by U. S. geneticist Nettie Stevens, 44, identifies the X and Y chromosomes, accurately pinpointing their role in determining the sex of an embryo. (p. 372)

  
A world diplomatic conference revises the Geneva Convention of 1864. 

1906
Finland grants women the right to vote on the same basis as men March 7, becoming the first European nation to do so. (New Zealand is the first ever to adopt woman sufferage September 19, 1893). (p. 373)

1909
The NAACP is founded at New York following a January meeting attended by social worker Mary White Ovington, 44. She joins with W. E. Walling; union leader Leonara O’Reilly, 38, immigrant leader Henry Moscowitz and others in "a revival of the abolitionist spirit," and the association holds its first conference May 30. (p. 383)

 The Men’s League for Woman Sufferage is founded by Columbia University doctoral candidate Max F. Eastman, 26, at the instigation of his older sister, Crystal. 
1910
Women in Washington State gain the right to vote in a constitutional amendment adopted November 8. (p. ) 

 

 1911
Missouri becomes the first state to provide public aid to mothers of dependent children; by 1913, 18 states will have aid-to-mothers statutes, but strict eligibility standards and the fact that few eligible women apply for assistance will make the laws applicable only to a small percentage of needy mothers. (p. 391)

1912
A minimum wage law for women and children enacted by the Massachusetts legislature is the first state law of its kind. (p. 394)

1916
Montana voters elect the first U. S. congresswoman, Republican Jeanette Rankin, 36, has crisscrossed the state on horseback and says that Montana women got the vote "because the spirit of pioneer days is still alive." (p. 407)
1917
New York adopts a constitutional amendment November 6 that makes it the first state to grant equal voting rights to women. (p. 412)

 

 1920
U. S. Women sufferage is proclaimed in effect August 26 following Tennessee’s ratification of the 19th amendment to the Constitution. (p. 422)

1921
Margaret Sanger organizes the first American Birth Control Conference in New York City. Sanger devotes her life to educating women about birth control and in 1953 is the founder and first president of the International Planned Parenthood Federation.
1923
Delilah Leontium Beasley becomes the first African American woman to be published in a major metropolitan newspaper, the Oakland, California Tribune. In her column "Activities Among Negroes," she campaigns against the use in the press of explicitly derogatory words when writing about African Americans. (p. 345)

 

 1924
Miriam A. "Ma" Ferguson, 49, runs for governor of Texas, in her own right, and is elected. Nelie Tayloe Ross is inaugurated as governor of Wyoming.

1925
Florence Rena Sabin becomes the first female member of the National Academy of Sciences when she is honored for her research in which she determines the origin of red corpuscles.
1927
 The New York Stock Exchange seats a women member for the first time. (p. 450)

1928
Alice Paul founds the World Party for Equal Rights for Women. (p. 453).

 1929.  The stock market crashes.

1930
Jennie Kelleher of Madison, Wisconsin, bowls a perfect 300 game February 12, becoming the first woman to do so.

1930
Dorthy Eustis introduces the Seeing Eye dogs for the blind to the United States.
1931
U. S. women take in boarders, do sewing, laundry & dressmaking, provide $1 manicures, and set up parlor grocery stores to supplement their husbands’ incomes as economic recession deepens.

 

1932
 Amelia Earhart lands in North Ireland after having made the first solo transatlantic flight by a woman. The flight takes 14 hours 16 minutes. (p. 468)

1932

Frances Perkins, the first female cabinet member, is appointed the U. S. Secretary of Labor by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. As the former executive secretary of the Consumer League of New York, Perkins directed studies of female and child labor. Perkins is reappointed for each of FDR’s three additional terms during which she drafts the Social Security Act and the National Labor Relations Act.
1934
Birth Control: Its Use and Misuse by U.S. birth control advocate Dorothy Dunbar Bromley says America could avoid 8,000 maternal deaths per year by legalizing abortion, at least until adequate contraceptives are made available. (p. 481)

 

 1935
The National Council of Negro Women Founded December 5 by Mary McLeod Bethune is the first National Coalition of black women’s organizations. Bethune will head the NCNW until 1949, working with the YWCA, the NAACP, the League of Women Voters, and other groups to eliminate racism and sexism. (p.482)

1936
Mary McLeod Bethune is named director of Negro affairs in the National Youth Administration June 24. She is the first black woman to receive a major federal appointment. (p. 486)
1937
The supreme court upholds the principle of a minimum wage for women March 29; its ruling in the case of West Coast Hotel v. Parrish reverses some earlier decisions. (p. 491)

 

 1938
French composer, teacher, and conductor Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979) becomes the first woman to conduct regular subscription concerts with the Boston Symphony. (p. 376)
World War II begins September 1 as German troops invade Poland.  The French have evacuated 16,000 children from Paris August 30 in anticipation of the conflict and declare martial law September 1.  Britian, too, has evacuated city children to the countryside.  Both countries declare war on Germany September 3.  (p. 499)

1939
The nation’s first black women judge is appointed by New York City’s mayor. Jane Bolin (Mizelle) is sworn in as judge of the Domestic Relations Court on July 22 and will serve until 1978. Bolin is the first black woman to graduate from Yale Law School, the fist to join the New York City Bar Association, and the first in the Corporation Counsel’s office. (p. 499)

 

 1940
Upon the death of her husband, Margaret Chase Smith (1897-1995) takes over his seat in the U. S. House of Representatives. She goes on to serve nine years in the House and 23 years in the U.S. senate, and she unsuccessfully attempts to win the Republican party nomination as presidential candidate in 1964. (P. 383)
1941
 After observing women at the Free Hospital for Women in Boston, gynecologist George Smith and his epidemiologist wife, Olive begin prescribing DES (a synthetic form of estrogen) to women believing that administration of the drug will protect developing fetuses from miscarrying early. DES is prescribed to 515 pregnant women between 1943 and 1948 and cooperating gynecologists in 48 other U.S. cities will give DES to 117 pregnant women during the same period. By 1971 it is determined that DES causes a rare but tragic form of vaginal cancer in the daughters of women who took the drug. (p. 508 & 623)

 

 1942
American women take to jobs in factories that are formerly held exclusively by men. When thousands of young men enlist in the military, women contribute to war efforts by filling the factory posts left vacant. Women also begin to establish them selves in military services. The Women’s Army Auxiliary corps (WAAC) is established by act of Congress in mid May and is headed by Oveta Hobby. The WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary emergency Service) is also authorized by act of Congress to support the navy is headed by Mildred H. McAffee. The Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, established September 10, is assigned to fly aircraft to bases in noncombat areas, but is absorbed by the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASPS) which supply more than 1,000 auxiliary pilots to the armed forces. (p. 510 & 385)

1943
The U.S. medical establishment recognizes the "Pap" test for detecting cervical cancer after 15 years of work by Greek-American physician George Nicholas Papanicolaou, who developed the vaginal smear test at Cornell in 1928. The test is used to diagnose the cancer that has been the leading cause of death among U.S. women and within 20 years it will have reduced cancer of the cervix to number three as a cause of death among U.S. women. (p. 514)
1947
Dorothy Fuldheim, a newscaster in Cleveland, Ohio, becomes the first female television news anchor. Fuldheim receives the assignment at WEWS-TV, the first station in the region between New York and Chicago, Illinois, to go on the air. Fuldheim remains at the anchor desk for 18 years. During her career she interviews such notables as Adolf Hitler, Jimmy Carter and Queen Farida of Egypt. By 1979, at age 86, she is still anchoring the early newscast in Cleveland, earning the distinction of being on the job longer than any other television broadcaster, male or female. (p. 394)

 

 1948
Former South African socialite Helen Beatrice May Joseph (née Fennell), 43, obtained a divorce from her dentist husband and helps found the Congress of Democrats, the white wing of the African National Congress, to fight racial discrimination. (p. 532)

1949
Harvard Law School announces October 9 that it will begin admitting women. (p. 536)

1950
Social reformer and suffragist Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) is elected to the American Hall of Fame. On July 29, 1979, the U.S. government issues a one-dollar Susan B. Anthony coin, making her the first U.S. woman to have her likeness on a coin in general circulation.. (p. 399)
1951
One of every four middle-class U.S. wives is in the work force, up from 7 percent in 1945. More than half of all female college graduates are employed. (p. 542)

1952
Naval Reserve officer Grace Brewster Hooper, now 46, invents the first computer compiler making it possible for the first time to program a computer automatically instead of writing instructions for each new software package. A Vassar graduate with a Yale PhD in mathematics Hopper is employed as a senior programmer for Remington Rand and works on Univax, the first large-scale commercial computer. She will be credited with inventing COBOL, the first user-friendly English-language business-oriented language for computers. (p. 546)

1953
The Second Sex, an English-language version of Le deuxième sex (1949) by Simone De Beauvoir (1908–1986) is published. It is a study of women in society, and introduced the phase "women’s liberation." (p. 404)
1954
Katherine Dexter McCormick, the second woman to graduate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1904), funds a research project to test oral contraceptives on human volunteers. Dr. Gregory Pincus, working at the Worcester Foundation for Experimental biology in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, tests his oral contraceptive on women volunteers. (p. 404)

1955
Mrs. Sheldon Robbins is named cantor of the Masapequa, Long Island, Reformed Jewish temple, becoming the first woman cantor. (p. 557)

1956
Harvard University appoints Cecilia Payne-Gaposhkin, professor and chairman of its Department of Astronomy, making her the first woman to become a tenure professor. (p. 560-61)
1957
Ethel Andrus (1884–1967), former teacher, is founder and first present of the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). By the 1990s, AARP becomes a powerful lobbying group on issues of importance to retired Americans. Andrus was also the founder in 1947 and first president of the National Retired Teachers Association (NRTA), work which led to her founding the larger association eleven years later. (p. 407)

1958
American psychiatrist Marion E. Kenworthy (1891–1980) becomes the first woman president of the American Psychoanalytic Association. In 1930, Kenworthy became the first woman professor of psychiatry at Columbia University. (p.407)

1959
Elanor Flexner, noted American historian, publishes Century of Struggle detailing the history of the women’s movement in the United States. Mable newcomer publishes a Century of Higher Education for Women the same year. Her study indicates that since 1920, women’s participation in higher education in the United States had been declining. (p. 409)
Sen. John F. Kenndey, now 43, wins election to the presidency by defeating Vice President Nixon, capturing 303 electoral votes to Nixon’s 219.  Kennedy will be the first Roman Catholic U. S. President and his wife, Jacqueline, the first Catholic First Lady.

1960
Developed in the 1950s, he first oral contraceptive is approved for distribution to consumers in May 1960. The G. D. Searl Company of Chicago is the first company to market the pill, calling it s brand Enovid. By 1964, six brands are available for prescriptive use by women. Its nearly 100 percent effectiveness in preventing pregnancy, affordable price, minimal health risks, and reversible effects make the pill an appealing choice of contraception for women. (p. 412)

1961
The President’s Commission on the Status of Women, under the administration of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, is established by Executive Order 10980, and headed by former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962). The commission successfully pushes for the passage of the Equal Pay Act (1963), the first federal law requiring equal compensation for men and women in federal jobs. (p. 414)
1962
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson warns of dangers to wildlife in the indiscriminate use of persistent pesticides such as DDT. Her book will lead to a federal ban on the use of DDT, despite testimony by reputable scientists that the pesticide poses no hazard to humans nor even to birds.

1963
Valentina Tereshkova (1937– ) orbits the earth 45 times, becoming the first woman (and the tenth person) to do so. She is the solo pilot on the Vostock 6 space capsule, and travels 1,242,800 miles during her orbital journey. She joins the cosmonaut program of the Soviet Union in 1962. (p. 416)

1964
The Civil Rights Act signed by President Johnson July 2 not only prohibits racial discrimination in employment, places of public accommodation, publicly owned facilities, union membership, and federal funded programs but also, in Title VII, forbids sex discrimination in the workplace. (p. 589)

1965
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commissioners, including Aileen Hernandez, the only woman, are appointed to oversee enforcement of the Civil Rights Act. Franklin D Roosevelt Jr. is chair of the commission. (p.419)

1966
The National Organization for Women (NOW) is founded by Betty Friedan (1921– ) and 27 associates who are frustrated by the failure of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to enforce the Civil Rights Act. Each of the 28 founding members contributes five dollars to help fund the organizing effort. The organizing conference is held October 29–30, when elections are held. The officers are Betty Friedan, president; Kay Clarenbach, chair of the board; Aileen Hernandez, executive vice president; Richard Graham, vice president; and Caroline Davis, secretary-treasurer. NOW is devoted to promoting full participation in society for women and advocates for adequate child care for working mothers, abortion rights, and the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. (p. 426)
1967
A Women’s Strike for Peace demonstrates outside the Pentagon February 15 as U.S. popular sentiment turns increasingly against the war in Vietnam while more troops are shipped overseas and casualties mount. About 2,500 women storm the Pentagon, demanding to see "the generals who send our sons to die." Martin Luther King, Jr., speaks out against the war in February, University of Wisconsin students push Dow Chemical recruiters off the campus to protest Dow’s production of napalm, and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D., NY) proposes that bombing of North Vietnam be halted so that troop withdrawal may be negotiated. Antidraft rallies bring out demonstrators in many cities. (p. 601)

1968
A coalition of women numbering over 5,000 converges on Washington, D.C. to demonstrate on the opening day of the U.S. Congress against the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War. Jeanette Rankin (1880–1973), the honorary leader of the demonstrators, is the first woman elected to U.S. House of Representatives. She is elected as a Republican to represent Montana, where women are given the right to vote in state elections prior to 1920, when national suffrage is won. In 1917, she is the only member of Congress to vote against U.S. entry into World War I, and in 1941, the only member of Congress to vote against entry into World War II. (p. 428)

1969
Harlem’s Hale House has its beginnings when Lorraine Hale sees a young heroin addict nodding off in the street with a 2-month-old infant falling out of her arms. She suggest that the woman take her baby to "my mother," Clara Hale (née McBride), 64, who accepts the child and within 2 months has turned her three-bedroom apartment into a nursery with 20 drug –addicted infants in cribs. Given help by Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton, she obtains a Harlem brownstone where she will care for about 1,000 babies, many of the addicted since birth, in the next 23 years. (p. 611)
Kent State University students in Ohio rally at noon May 4 to protest the wodening of the war in Southeast Asia.  National Guardsmen open fire on the 1,000 students and four fall dead.  (p. 615)

1970
The U.S. Army commissions its first women general in 196 years June 11. Col. Elizabeth P. Hoisington, 52, director of the 12,000-member Women’s Army Corps, and Col. Anna Mae Hays, 50, Army Nurse Corps director, were nominated by President Nixon May 15 for brigadier generals. (p. 615)

1971
At a conference attended by more than 2,000 women, the National Women’s Political Caucus is founded. The goal of the Caucus is to support women interested in running for political office, to advocate for more women candidates within the major political parties, and to organize women at the local, state, and national levels to become more politically active. Among the founding members are Bella Abzug, Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm and Betty Friedan. (p. 433)

1972
The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is passed by both houses of the U.S. Congress and is signed by President Richard Nixon. The amendment expires in 1982, without being ratified by the required two-thirds of the states; it is three states short of full ratification.

1973
The Supreme Court rules 7 to 2 January 22 in Roe v. Wade that abortion should be a decision between a woman and her physician. Justice Harry A. Blackmun, who writes the majority opinion, notes that the Constitution does not explicitly mention any right of privacy, and he rejects the argument that a woman has an absolute right "to terminate her pregnancy at whatever time, in whatever way, and for whatever reason she alone chooses," but he says that in the first 3 months of pregnancy the decision to have an abortion lies with the woman and her doctor. (p. 635)

 A cease-fire in Vietnam January 28 ends direct involvement of U.S. ground forces in Indochinese hostilities.  America’s combat death toll has reached 45,958. (p.631)
1974
Connecticut voters elect former Secretary of State Mrs. Ella Grasso (née Tambussi), 55, to the governorship. The first woman to gain a state governorship in her own right, she will chair the Governors’ Commission on the Status of Women.

 

 1975
The Supreme Court reverses its 1961 decision with regard to all-male juries. The Sixth Amendment stipulates that a defendant has the right to a jury drawn from a fair cross section of the community, and a Louisiana law allowing women automatic exemption from jury duty violates that amendment, the Court declares. (The ruling has little practical effect since all states, including Louisiana, have repealed statutes exempting women from jury duty, although in some states women are treated differently from men.) (p. 641)

1976
President-elect Carter names former U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg Patricia Harris, now 53, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) December 21. She will be the first black woman to serve in any presidential Cabinet. (p. 645)

 Georgia governor James Earl “Jimmy” Carter, Jr., 52, defeats Gerald Ford’s bid for reelection.  Carter’s wife, Rosalynn, 46, takes an active role in the campaign and will be a participant in the new administration.  (p. 645)

1977
The National Women’s Conference at Houston November 18 to 21 assembles 20,000 women, men and children from all parts of the political spectrum in the first federally sponsored gathering to discuss and act upon issues of concern to women. Included are mothers, daughters, grandmothers, homemakers, working women, students, the First Lady, two former First Ladies, members of Congress, etc.
Love Canal east of Niagara Falls, NY, makes headlines in August as scores of residents are evacuated from houses built over an abandoned excavation site used from 1947 to 1953 to dump toxic chemical waste.  A high incidence of birth defects and illnesses has been reported in he neighborhood, and there will be further evacuations in the next few years.  (p. 659)

1978
The Pentagon promotes the commander of the army military police school at Fort McClellan, AL, June 30. A former WAC commander, Brig. Gen Mary Clark, 57, becomes the army's first two-star major general. (p. 655)

1979
Mother Teresa, born Agnes Bojaxhiu (1910–1998) in Albania, is recognized for her work at the orphanage she established in Calcutta, India. (p. 444)

1980
The U.S. Military Academy at West Point graduates its first class to include women. The top or "distinguished" cadets graduate in order of overall performance. Andrea Hollen, a distinguished cadet, is the first woman cadet in the class of 1980 to receive her diploma. All receive commissions as second lieutenants in the U. S. Army upon graduation from the academy. (p. 447)

 U.S. voters turn Carter out of office and elect former California governor Ronald Wilson Reagan, 69, an ex-Hollywood actor who campaigns with slick television commercials and wins 489 electoral votes to Carter’s 149.  Leading liberal Democrats lose as the Republicans gain control of the Senate for the first time since the 1950s.  (p. 665)

1981
President Reagan appoints Arizona Judge Sandra Day O’Connor, 51, tot eh Supreme Court July 7. Although she has had only 18 months’ experience on the state appeals court, she was graduated third in her Stanford University Law School class (Justice William Rehnquist was first), championed women’s rights in her 6 years as a state legislator and sided against antiabortion zealots, favors the proposed Equal Rights Amendment, is opposed by right-to-life activists, is confirmed by the Senate September 21, and becomes the first woman justice on the high court. (p. 670)
A Vietnam War memorial dedicated at Washington November 13 displays the names of all 57,692 killed or missing U.S. soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen etched into black granite.  The monument was designed last year by Yale architecture student Maya Ying Lin, now 22.  (p. 674)

1982
The National Organization for Native American Women (NONAW) is founded at Albuquerque, NM, to support and develop the competency of Native American women and provide employment opportunities for them through networking, education, self-help programs, and the like. (p. 675)
1983
U.S. physicist Sally Kristin ride 32, lands in he space shuttle Challenger at Edwards Air Force Base, CA, June 24 after a 6-day mission—the first American woman to go into space. (p. 679)

 

 1984
The first woman ever to be nominated for such an office, Geraldine Ferraro accepts Walter Mondale’s invitation to the ticket with the knowledge that their campaign will not be easy. A former lawyer and Congresswoman, Ferraro is not prepared for the criticism ad personal attacks that follow her nomination. The campaign is not able to recover from the media blitz, in which Ferraro is accused of such debaucheries as tax fraud and involvement with organized crime. The Mondale/Ferraro ticket loses in a landslide to incumbent Ronald Reagan. (p. 453)

1985
EMILY's List (Early Money Is Like Yeast), a political action committee whose purpose is to support worthy U.S. women Democratic party candidates, is founded by IBM heiress and longtime political activist Emily Ellen Malcolm, 38, who sets out to raise money from men as well as women donors (she herself has anonymously be donating $500,000 per year to various causes). (p. 687)
 

 
Nuclear energy receives a setback April 26 when the Soviet Union’s Chernobyl power plant near Kiev in the Ukraine explodes, sending clouds of radioactive fallout across much of Europe.  More than 30 firefighters and plant workers die in the first weeks after the accident;  predications of future cancer deaths due to radioactive exposure range from 6,500 to 45,000.  Vast tracts of Soviet land will remain uninhabitable and unarable for thousands of years.  (p. 691)

1986
All seven astronauts aboard the U.S. space shuttle Challenger perish January 28 as their craft explodes 73 seconds after liftoff from Florida’s Cape Canaveral. Included are NASA biomedical engineer Judith A. Resnik, 36, and Concord, NH, schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe, 37, who was chosen from 11,000 applicants to be the first civilian in space. (p. 690)

1987
Oklahoma Cherokee Wilma Mankiller,41, is elected chief of the 108,000-member Cherokee Nation—the first female chief of the second largest tribe (only the Navajos are more numerous). The Cherokee operate industries, health clinics, and cultural programs that employ about 1,700 with an annual budget of $52 million, and Mankiller aims to see that her people solve their own economic and social problems. (p. 692)

 U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop tells a House subcommittee February 10 that condom commercials should be permitted on TV to help stop the AIDS epidemic. (p. 693)
1988
The U.S. Supreme Court rules unanimously June 20 in New York State Club Association, Inc. v. The City of New York that the city’s 984 law banning discrimination against women and minorities in private clubs with more than 400 members does not violate First Amendment rights. The ruling supports the city’s human rights law and will affect clubs in every other U.S. city. (p. 696)		 European women join with men to overthrow Communist regimes in Russia, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Romania.  Chinese women are killed along with men as the Beijing government cracks down on pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square.  (p. 700)

 

 1989
More than 56 million U.S. women are in the civilian workforce and represent 45 percent of that workforce, up from 38 percent in 1970. Nearly half of all accountants and bus drivers are women, up from 23.3 percent and 29.7 percent, respectively, in 1970. One out of every five doctors and lawyers is a woman (in 1970, only 7 percent of doctors and 3 percent of lawyers were women). (p. 700)
The Americans with Disabilities Act signed by President Bush July 26 bans discrimination in employment, public accommodations, transportation, and telecommunications against the nation’s 43 million disabled persons.  The law provides new protection for workers with AIDS.

1990
Bernadette Locke becomes the first woman to coach a major college men’s sport when she accepts the position of assistant coach on the University of Kentucky men’s basketball team. (p. 707)

1991
Sexual harassment in the U.S. workplace is the focus of public attention in mid-October as University of Oklahoma Law School professor Anita Hill, 35, charges that Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, 45, made indecent remarks to her while head of the Equal Opportunity Commission 8 years ago and earlier, in the Department of Education. Both are black, but Thomas claims he is being "lynched" as an "uppity" black; the Senate votes 52 to 48 to confirm his appointment to succeed Thurgood Marshall. (p. 708)

 After Iraqi forces invade Kuwait August 2, 1990, U.S. and allied missiles and planes bomb targets in Iraq and Kuwait beginning January 17, ground troops invade Iraq February 24, and Operation Desert Storm continues for 100 hours, driving Iraqi forces out of Kuwait and restoring the emirate.  (p. 707)
U.S. voters elect Arkansas governor William Jefferson Blythe “Bill” Clinton, 46, to the presidency rejecting George Bush’s reelection bid as the economic recession shows few signs of abating.  Bush wins 18 states with 168 electoral votes to Clinton’s 370 while taking 38 million popular votes to Clinton’s 44 million (Dallas billionaire H. Ross Perot, who entered the race October 1, gets 19 million).  (p.711)

1992
A pro-choice demonstration sponsored by NOW at Washington, D.C., April 5 brings out a crowd of 750,000 activists—the largest march ever held at the capital—to hear speeches by NOW president Patricia Ireland and others against opponents of legalized abortion. (p. 716)

1993
Washington, D.C., circuit judge Ruth Ginsburg (née Bader), 60, is confirmed August 3 as the second woman U.S. Supreme Court justice, succeeding Byron White, who has resigned. Her appointment by President Clinton June 14 cheers many women, who note that Ginsburg argued six women’s rights cases before the Court from 1973 to 1976 and won five of them. She was obliged to work as a legal secretary after getting her degree from Columbia Law School because law firms were not hiring women associates. (p. 717)
1995
Roberta Cooper Ramo, an attorney from Albuquerque, New Mexico, becomes the first woman to hold the office of president of the American Bar Association. Ramo assumes the leadership post in the 117-year-old ABA at its annual meeting in Chicago, IL (p. 465)
References:   
   "The People's Chronology."  James Traeger.  Henry Holt &  Company, Inc.
   "The Women's Chronology."  James Traeger.  Henry Holt &  Company, Inc.
   "Chronology of Women Worldwide."  Lynne Brakeman, Editor.  Eastword