Women's History
John Olson/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Women’s History Month is an annual celebration of women’s contributions to history, culture and society. Women’s history in the United States has been full of trailblazers and pioneers: Women who fought for their rights, worked hard to be treated equally and made great strides in fields like science, politics, sports, literature and art.
Women's History Stories
Josephine Baker's Daring Double Life as a World War II Spy
As war drums reverberated across Europe in 1939, the head of France’s military intelligence service recruited an unlikely spy: France’s most famous woman—Josephine Baker. Jacques Abtey had spent the early days of World War II recruiting spies to collect information on Nazi ...read more
How World War I Helped Women Ditch the Corset
Massive cultural shifts during and after World War I helped free women from confining roles—and the confining corsets that bound them to the previous age. The evolution of the bra re-shaped the image of what a woman could be, whether she was serving in the war effort, fighting ...read more
How Suffragists Pioneered Aggressive New Tactics to Push for the Vote
Sometimes, being polite just doesn’t work. As the 20th century dawned, American activists for women's suffrage were coming to the conclusion that decades of quiet appeals to reason and logic had failed to move the needle for their cause. Fresh strategies were required. A new ...read more
11 Bold Women Who Changed the World
WATCH: 11 Underappreciated World-Changing Women 1. Sybil Ludington: The Female Paul Revere On the night of April 26, 1777, 16-year-old Sybil Ludington rode nearly 40 miles to warn some 400 militiamen that the British troops were coming. Much like the ride of Paul Revere, ...read more
How the Mirabal Sisters Helped Topple a Dictator
On November 25, 1960, three sisters—Patria, Minerva and María Teresa Mirabal—were reported killed in an “automobile accident.” Reports said a car they were riding in plunged over a cliff in the Dominican Republic. At least, that was the story in El Caribe, a newspaper sanctioned ...read more
Why Suffragists Helped Send Women Doctors to WWI's Front Lines
The unlikely band of American women who crossed the Atlantic into war-torn France in February 1918 included six doctors, 13 nurses, a dentist, a plumber, an electrician, a carpenter and a mechanic. They were the first wave of women determined to build hospitals to treat the ...read more
The Female World War II Codebreaker Who Busted Nazi Spy Rings
In March 1942, an American codebreaker named Elizebeth Smith Friedman made a horrifying discovery: Nazi spies in Latin America had located a large Allied supply ship named the Queen Mary along the coast of Brazil, and German U-boats were planning to sink it. So intent was Adolf ...read more
Why the 19th Amendment Did Not Guarantee All Women the Right to Vote
With the certification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on August 26, 1920, women secured the right to vote after a decades-long fight. "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 ...read more
Women in WWII Took on These Dangerous Military Jobs
Women served on both sides of World War II, in official military roles that came closer to combat than ever before. The Soviet Union, in particular, mobilized its women: Upward of 800,000 would enlist in the Red Army during the war, with more than half of these serving in ...read more
9 Groundbreaking Inventions by Women
Female inventors have played a large role in U.S. history, but haven’t always received credit for their work. Besides the fact that their contributions have sometimes been downplayed over overlooked, women—particularly women of color—have historically had fewer resources to apply ...read more
How Barbara Jordan's 1974 Speech Marked a Turning Point in the Watergate Scandal
In a perfect storm of unlikely circumstances, Barbara Jordan, a junior congresswoman from Houston, Texas, who grew up in segregation, landed a primetime spot to deliver an opening statement on July 25, 1974, during President Richard Nixon’s impeachment hearings. Jordan's speech ...read more
Black Women Who Have Run for President
When Kamala Harris entered the 2020 U.S. presidential race, she chose campaign materials with a sleek typeface and red-and-yellow color scheme that mirrored those of the late politician Shirley Chisholm, who made history in 1972 after becoming the first Black woman to compete for ...read more
Shirley Chisholm: Facts About Her Trailblazing Career
Shirley Chisholm is widely known for her history-making turn in 1972 when she became the first African American from a major political party to run for president and the first Democratic woman of any race to do so. But Chisholm’s presidential bid was far from Chisholm's only ...read more
‘Black Rosies’: The Forgotten African American Heroines of the WWII Homefront
Rosie the Riveter—the steely-eyed World War II heroine with her red bandanna, blue coveralls and flexed bicep—stands as one of America’s most indelible military images. Positioned under the maxim “We Can Do It,” the “Rosie” image has come to broadly represent the steadfast ...read more
On 9/11, Heather Penney Tried to Bring Down Flight 93
September 11, 2001 was supposed to be a typical day for Lieutenant Heather Penney of the District of Columbia Air National Guard. As Penney recalled in a 2016 interview with HISTORY, that morning she was attending a briefing at Andrews Air Force Base, planning the month’s ...read more
How Phyllis Schlafly Derailed the Equal Rights Amendment
In 1972, it seemed ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment was all but a sure thing. First introduced to Congress in 1923 by suffragist Alice Paul, the proposed 27th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which stated "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or ...read more