1923 ERA first introduced into Congress
1945  Equal Pay Act introduced in Congress by Rep. Helen Gahagan Douglas
1946, 50, 53 Congress continues to vote down ERA
1953 DeBeauvoir's Second Sex published in U.S.
Women accepted as ministers in Presbyterian Church
1959 Barbie Doll introd by Matell; invented by Ruth Handler, later invents breast prosthesis for mastectomies

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1960 Birth Control Pill approved for marketing
1961 JFK appoints President's Commission on the Status of women (JFK admin 2.4% women, same as before
 
 Equal Pay Act finally passes Congress
1963 Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique published
1964  Title VII of Civil Rts Act prohibits sex discrim. in employment (in businesses of 25+)
1965 Women's subordinate role questioned in both SNCC and SDS
 
Griswold vs. Conn. struck down by SupCt; rt to privacy assures married couples access to contraception
1966 Formation of NOW; 1st act --petition NYT to ban gender segregated want ads
 
Masters and Johnson publish Human Sexual Response
Flight attendants file suit re firings for marriage, pregnancy or age
White v. Crook strikes down Alabama law excluding women from jury duty
1967 1st CR groups
 
ERA introduced again
Colorado 1st state to liberalize abortion laws -- rape, incest, mo's health, or defective child; NC & CA follow
NOW: picketing and notarized complaint agnst NYT sex-segregated want-ads
LBJ signs executive orders banning sex discrim in federal employment, allowing promotion past Colonel
NYRW (Radical Women) founded; later splits into WITCH & Redstockings
 
1968 Demonstration against Miss America Pageant
Several different state laws requiring longer prison sentences for women struck down
EEOC issues guidelines forbidding male/female want ads
Shirley Chisholm 1st black women elected to House of Rep.
Rosenfeld vs. Southern Pacific supercedes state laws agnst overtime & heavy lifting for women
WEAL (Women's Equity Action League) formed to fight sex discrim in education
"Women's Lib" groups begin appearing -- spin-off from student activism
 
1969 Cornell U -- 1st Women's Studies courses
Nixon signs Exec Order requiring Affirmative Action in federal gvmt.
NARAL founded at 1st national conference on abortion laws
NOW: "Public Accommodations Week" : demos agnst Oak Room NYC, Polo Lounge LA
Canada legalizes abortion and homosexuality
Weeks v. Southern Bell strikes down weight-lifting rule of 30 lbs (typewriter heavier than that)
EEOC establishes guideline striking down all protective labor laws applicable only to women
1st Women's Law course taught at NYU Law School

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1970 Barbara Seaman, The Doctor's Case Against the Pill published
WEAL files class-action suit agnst sex discrim in higher ed, including sports
San Diego State establishes first WS BA degrees program
Hawaii legalizes abortion; NY legal first 2 trimester; Alaska repeals existing restr. law
Women charge Newsweek wi sex discrim; sue Time Inc; sit-in at Ladies' Home Journal
 ERA forced out of Committee to House of Rep
Kate Millett, Sexual Politics published
House Subcommittee on Education: hearings on sex discrim
WEAL files sex discrim agnst entire state education system of Florida; all US Med School s
NOW files sex discrim agnst 1300 corporations wi no Affirm Action plans
Women's Strike for Equality (50,000 march in NYC)
 NYC passes law agnst sex discrm in public accommodations
1st women's professional tennis tour
Title X of Public Health Service Act provides funding for family planning info for low-income
Mass. law against sale of birth control to unmarried struck down
 
1971 NYRF hold speak-out on rape; followed by workshop
NWPC (National Women's Political Caucus) founded; sues all law schools in U.S. receiving federal funds
1st girls appointed as Senate pages
Phillips v. Martin Marietta cannot refuse woman employment b/c small children unless also refuse men
NOW files charges agnst entire U.S. public school system to draw attention to sex discrim in ed (teachers & school admins specifically exempted frm coverage by Equal Pay Act & Ti. VII Civil Rts Act)
 ERA passes House of Rep [354-23]
Nixon vetos federally funded day care
Ms. appears as insert in NY magazine
Boston Women's Health Collective, Our Bodies Ourselves: A Course by & for Women
 Reed v Reed forbids men arbitrary preference as estate executors (argued by Ruth Bader Ginsberg)
EEOC files 23,000-page report wi FCC charging AT&T "largest oppressor of women workers in U.S."
 
1972 1st full issue of Ms . published
 ERA passes Senate [84-8] (deadline for state ratification 1979)
Shirley Chisholm runs for Presidency
  Equal Employment Opportunity Act empowers EEOC to take legal action to enforce Ti VII of 1964 Civil Rights Act
 *Title IX of Education Amendments Act outlaws sex discrim in educational institutions; this includes collegitate sports
 Equal Pay Act extended to cover executive, administrative, and professional personnel
 Numerous court cases challenge mandatory pregnancy leave, statutes, and policies
6 state legislatures pass ERA
NOW issues booklet against sexism in elementary school textbooks
 1973 Roe V. Wade invalidates state laws agnst abortion in 1st trimester on grounds of right to privacy
Universities begin establishing academic-athletic scholarships for women
AT&T signs $38 million sex discrimination settlement with EEOC & Dept. of Labor
SupCt. prohibits sex-segregated advertizing
AFL-CIO endorses ERA; 30 states have ratified ERA
First battered women shelters opened in Minnesota and Boston
U.S. Tennis Assoc. gives equal prize$ to women in U.S. Open; Billie Jean King beats Bobby Riggs
NOW demonstrates agnst Little League World Series; suits filed; NJ rules no girls illegal
 
1974  Equal Credit Opportunity Act outlaws credit discrim on basis of sex or marital status
Weak guidelines for compliance wi Title IX finally published by HEW
Ella Grasso, 1st woman elected Governor in her own right (Conn.)
Gay-rts, anti-discrim laws passed in Alfred NY and St. Paul Minn.
First women ordained as priests in Episcopal church
 Fair Housing Act of 1968 extended to prohibit sex discrim
NOW, WEAL & NEA (Ntnl Education Assoc) file suit agnst U.S. gvmt for failing to enforce Ti IX
Conference on Rape organized by national Black Feminist Organization and NY Women Against Rape
 
1975 Congress passed legislation opening the U.S. military academies to women.
Against Our Will by Susan Browmiller was published (bookdeefines rape as a crime of violence r.t. of sexuality)
The American Psychological Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders.
 
1976 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states cannot require a woman seeking an abortion to get consent from her husband or force all single girls under 18 desiring an abortion to get permission from a parent.
Redbook magazine surveys sexual harassment in the workplace. Replies from 9,000 young women (in their 20s and 30s) showed that 90% thought the problem was "serious."
The Episcopal Church officially recognized ordination of 15 women as priests
Battered Wives by Del Martin was published. -- the first major report on this wide-spread form of violence against women. MS counts about ten shelters for battered women in the US.
NASA starts training women to be astronauts
 
1977 National Women's Conference in Houston
First Women's Caucus held in Congress
Iris Riveria refuses to make coffee for her boss and is fired (later rehired due to protests) Her case is first use of term "sexual harassment"
 
1978  Passage of the Pregnancy Discrimination Bill outlaws firing, not hiring, or not promoting women because of pregnancy
Nancy Kasselbaum elected to the US Senate, 1st woman senator not the widow of a congressman
NOW organizes boycott of states where ERA has not passed
Deadline for ratification of ERA extended
100,000 march for ERA in DC
First national conference on pornography
 
1979    First national march for gay rights attracted over 100,000 marchers to Washington.
Tens of thousands of demonstrators in NYC commemorate the 10th anniversary of the "Stonewall Riot," which many consider to be the beginning of the gay rights movement .
For the first time in history the presidents of all seven sisters colleges were women
Anti-porn demonstration in Times Square
Judy Chicago completes The Dinner Party

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1980 Ronald Reagan was elected President. However, for the first time, women voted differently than men in a Presidential election; women voted for Reagan significantly less than men did.
Thirty-three percent of all high school athletes were female-a 600% increase since the early 70's
The Women's Committee of the Directors Guild released statistics showing that of the 7,332 movies released by major American studios between 1949 and 1979, only 14 were directed by women.
Democratic party agrees to equal representation of women and men on all committees
 
1981 Sandra Day O'Connor first woman appointed to the US Supreme Court
President Reagan endorses the Human Life Amendment (HLA), a constitutional amendment which would ban abortion, the IUD, and some forms of the birth control pill.
 
1982  the Equal Rights Amendment is defeated: three states short of ratification.
Wisconsin became the first state in the nation to pass a law that prohibited discrimination against homosexuals
 
1983 Sally Ride becomes first American woman astronaut
Department of Health and Human Services is barred from implementing the "squeal rule" requiring government funded clinics to notify parents when teenagers seek prescription contraceptives
Washington State "comparable worth" case
 Montana became the first state to ban sex discrimination in all types of insurance.
Christine Craft sues TV station for firing her because she was deemed "too unattractive, too old and not deferential enough to men."
 
1984 Geraldine Ferraro nominated by Democrats as vice-presidential candidate
in Grove City College v. Bell , the U. S. Supreme Court accepted the Reagan Administration position that Title IX banned sex discrimination only in the specific programs within an educational institution that directly received Federal funding.
Incidents of violence or harassment of clinics reported to the National Abortion Federation (NAF) totaled 123 in 1983. Within the first ten weeks of 1984, such incidents numbered 59
 
1985 Wilma Mankiller becomes the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation
Emily's List founded to raise money for pro-choice, Democratic candidates
In 1979, only five states-Oregon, Iowa, Nebraska, New Jersey and Delaware-had statutes permitting the prosecution of husbands who raped their wives. Since 1979- and the growth of the feminist movement-new laws or court decisions made marital rape a criminal offense in 18 additional states and the District of Columbia. In 1985, 15 more states were considering similar statutes.
 
1986 The largest march for women's rights in U.S. history occurred on March 9th in Washington, DC; the call to keep abortion and birth control legal drew 125,000
 Merritor Savings Bank v. Vinson : Supreme Ct affirmed that sex harassment on job is sex discrim and violation of Title VII of Civil Rts Act
The Supreme Court ruled against the right to privacy for gay men and lesbians in Bowers v. Hardwick, thereby upholding a Georgia statute which criminalized consensual sodomy.
More than 33% of U.S. medical school students are women, up from 9% in 1969
At Harvard University, only 54, or 7%, of the 787 tenured faculty were women. Forty-two percent of the undergraduates were women.
The Handmaid's Tale , a novel by Margaret Atwood, published
The third edition of Arthur Janson's History of Art, the standard college art history textbook, incorporated female artists for the first time.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional an Indianapolis ordinance authored by Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, that had defined pornography as discrimination against women.
Congress approved stricter federal rape laws. The single crime of rape was now replaced by four gradations; penalties were based on the severity of the crime; and the marital rape exemption was abolished.
1987 National Museum of Women in the Arts opens in Washington DC
The National Gay and Lesbian Rights March drew 500,000 to Washington, DC. More than 5 times the size of the 1979 lesbian and gay rights march, it was ignored by Congress a few days later when it passed repressive Helms and Dannemeyer amendments restricting AIDS spending.
 As in 1986, 1985, and 1984, Rep. Rose Mary Oakar's (D-OH) pay equity bill, Rep. Patricia Schroeder's (D-CO) Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), and the Civil Rights Restoration Act were blocked.
 
1988 Over President Reagan's veto, Congress finally passed the Civil Rights Restoration Act which reversed the U.S. Supreme Court's 1984 Grove City decision and restored full coverage of Title IX provisions prohibiting sex discrimination in education by recipients of federal funds
France became the first Western nation to approve the use of RU-486, the abortion pill.
Lambda Delta Lambda, a lesbian sorority, was officially recognized by UCLA, the first Greek-letter system gay sorority or fraternity to be approved by a university.
" Operation Rescue," organized by Randall E. Terry to blockade access to abortion clinics
 
1989 The U.S. Supreme Court, in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, upheld a Missouri statute that said that human life began at conception, barred the use of public funds for abortion, prohibited abortions at public health facilities and required physicians to test for fetal viability after the 19th week of pregnancy.
President George Bush vetoed a bill approved by the U.S. House and Senate that would permit the use of Medicaid funds to pay for abortions for poor women who were victims of "promptly reported" rape or incest
A Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory committee voted unanimously to recommend approval of Norplant, a long-acting contraceptive, that protects a woman from pregnancy for up to five years when implanted under the skin.
"Mommy Track" by Felice Schwartz article published in Harvard Business Review
Governor Robert Casey of Pennsylvania signed a package of anti-choice legislation, including a 24-hour waiting period for abortions, spousal notification, and a ban on abortions performed after the 24th week of pregnancy.
Mark Lepine gunned down 14 women engineering students at the University of Montreal

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1990 President Bush signed legislation requiring the Federal government to collect hate crime statistics based on race, ethnic background, religion and sexual orientation. Excluded from this bill were crimes motivated by gender. (04/90)
President Bush I vetoed the "Family and Medical Leave Act"
In Hodgson v. Minnesota, the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision ruled that states may require that pregnant teenage girls either notify both biological parents before having an abortion or seek a judicial authorization through "judicial bypass."
A study by the Institute of Medicine reported that the United States had fallen significantly behind other countries in developing new methods of birth control. Approximately 750,000 of the abortions performed annually in this country resulted from contraceptive failure
IBM announced that it would spend $3 million in 1991 to build five child-care centers
Ms. magazine was reborn as a bi-monthly with no advertisements
Ohio Governor Richard F. Celeste granted clemency to 25 women prisoners who he said had committed crimes because they were victims of battering or other forms of physical or emotional abuse
Iron John, A Book About Men by Robert Bly was published and became the bible of a "men's movement."
 
1991 Anita Hill testifies at the Clarence Thomas Confirmation Hearings
Susan Faludi publishes Backlash
William Kennedy Smith and Mike Tyson rape trials
U.S. Supreme Court in Automobile Workers v. Johnson Controls, declared that employers could not exclude women from jobs in which exposure to toxic substances could harm a developing fetus
The U.S. Supreme Court in Rust v. Sullivan upholds a "gag rule," barring clinics from counseling women on abortion, even if the continued pregnancy threatened a woman's life or health.
In the Gulf War, women were 35,000 of the 540,000 U.S. troops.
The U. S. Senate voted overwhelmingly to open combat positions for women aviators.
Thelma & Louise struck a nerve with women who made it a sleeper hit of the year.
Governor Norm Bangerter of Utah signed into law the nation's most restrictive abortion legislation. The law stated that all abortions were illegal and made exceptions only for the mother's life, grave damage to the mother's medical health, grave fetal defects, and rape or incest and only during the first 20weeks
Tailhook Association Convention in Las Vegas.
 
1992 AAUW report on sex-bias in US schools, "Shortchanging Girls, Shortchanging America"
In Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, the Supreme Court reaffirmed what it called the "essential holdings" of Roe that women have a constitutional right to choose abortion prior to fetal viability, but declared that states also have a "compelling" interest in potential human life throughout pregnancy and upheld a series of restrictions.
Record-breaking number of women elected to Senate (six) provokes installation of women's restroom in the Senate!
Congress passed a Family Medical Leave bill which President BushI vetoed
The Senate Judiciary Committee reported that there were about a million attacks on women in the previous year by their husbands or lovers and another 3 million violent domestic crimes that went unreported.
Twenty years after the passage of Title IX prohibiting sex discrimination in education, a report issued by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) documented the persistence of bias in favor of men. For every woman who got a chance to play Division I college sports, there were 2.24 men; for every woman who received a scholarship, 2.26 men did; and for every $1 paid to a men's basketball coach, the women's coach received 55 cents.
Women are now paid 71 cents for every dollar paid to men. The range is from 64 cents for working-class women to 77cents for professional women with doctorates. Black women earned 65 cents, Latinas 54 cents.
Women owned business employ more workers in the United States than the Fortune 500 companies do worldwide. 
Women win all five of the gold medals won by Americans during the Winter Olympics.

1993 Toni Morrison wins the Nobel Prize for Literature
Maya Angelou reads an original poem at President Clinton's Inauguration
Take Our Daughters to Work Day debuts, designed to build girls self-esteem and open their eyes to a variety of career possibilities for women
The Family Medical Leave Act finally goes into effect. Vetoed by president Bush, it is the first bill signed by President Clinton.

Fifty states have revised their laws so that, depending on the degree of additional violence used, husbancs can be prosecuted for sexually assaulting their wives.
With the increased number of women members, the 103rd Congress passes into law thirty bills on women's issues during its first year, 33 during its second. The previous record for any year: five.

President Clinton issues an executive order instructing the FDA "assess initiatives... [that can] promote the testing, licensing, and manufacturing of RU486." 
    

1994 Every couple applying for a marriage license in California is given information about domestic violence.
Congress adopts the Gender Equity in Eduation Act to train teachers, promote math and science learning by girls, counsel pregnant teens, and prevent sexual harassment.
The Violence Against Women Act funds services for victims of rape and domestic violence, allows women to seek civil rights remedies for gender-related crimes, provides training to increase police and court officials' sensitivity and a national 24-hour hotline for battered women.

1996 U.S. women's spectacular success in the Summer Olympics (19 gold medals, 10 silver, 9 bronze) is the result of large numbers of girls and women active in sports since the passage of Title IX.
United States v. Virginia affirmes that the male-only admissions policy of the state-supported Virginia Military Institute violates the Fourteenth Amendment.
Total number of female bishops, priests, ministers, and rabbis: Baptist: 2,313 ministers; Episcopal: 6 bishops, 1,452 priests; Evangelical Lutheran: 1,838 pastors; Judaic, Reform: 259 rabbis; Judaic, conservative: 72 rabbis; Judaic, Orthodox: 0 rabbis; Latter-day Saints: 0 priests; Methodists: 10 bishops, 4,995 ministers; Presbyterian: 3,026 ministers; Roman Catholic: 0 priests; Seventy-day Adventist: 0 priests; Unitarian Universalist Association: 4,443 ministers; United Church of Christ (Congregationalist): 2,080 ministers.