FUN FACTS FRIDAYS: WOMEN

This Friday post features some random facts arranged chronologically about the progress of women, primarily Canadian and American, through the years.

1839 Mississippi was the first state to let a woman buy land in her own name.

1849 Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to achieve a medical degree in the United States, graduating from Geneva Medical College (now Hobart College) in upstate New York.

1855 University of Iowa becomes the first coeducational public or state university in the United States.

1858 Mary Fellows was the first woman west of the Mississippi River to receive a baccalaureate degree from Cornell College in Iowa. 1862 Mary Jane Patterson was the first African American woman to earn a Bachelor of Arts from Oberlin College in Ohio.

1859 Married women can own property in Canada but sale of the property requires the agreement of both the woman and her husband.

1867 After being refused admission to the University of Toronto, Canadian Emily Stowe finished a medical degree in New York. On her return to Toronto, she was the first woman to practise medicine in Canada, although she had to wait until 1880 to get a full medical licence.

1875 Grace Annie Lockhart became the first woman in the entire British empire to earn a Bachelor’s degree, graduating with a Bachelor of Science from what became Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick.

1910 Alice Stebbins Wells was the first American-born female police officer in the United States, hired in Los Angeles.

1920 The Dominion Elections Act (Canada) established the right to vote for women and made permanent the right for women to be elected to Parliament. 1920 The 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution granted women the right to vote. (In both countries specific groups of women and men were still excluded from franchise for racial, religious or economic reasons.)

1925  The 14th governor of Wyoming, Nellie Tayloe Ross was the first woman governor in the U.S., elected after her husband died in office. 1974 Ella Grasso of Connecticut was the first female governor elected without being the wife or widow of a past state governor.

1930 Cairine Wilson of Ontario became the first woman appointed to the Senate of Canada. 1932 Hattie Caraway of Arkansas became the first woman to win election to the U.S. Senate.

1968 Shirley Chisholm became the first African American woman elected to the United States Congress, representing New York’s 12th Congressional district. 1978 Rosemary Brown was the first Black woman elected to a provincial legislature (British Columbia) in Canada. 1993 Jean Augustine was the first Black woman elected to the House of Commons, representing the riding of Etobicoke-Lakeshore in Ontario.

1972 The Boston Marathon (first run in 1897) allowed females to run. 2017 46% of marathon runners were women.

1973 Rosella Bjornson of Alberta became the first female pilot for a commercial airline in North America, flying for Transair out of Winnipeg, Manitoba.

1978 Louise Brown in England was the first human to have been born after conception by in vitro fertilization. Since then five million babies have been born worldwide through assisted reproduction.

1981 Sandra Day O’Connor of Arizona became the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States. 1982 Bertha Wilson of Ontario was the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada.

1983 Sally Ride of California became America’s first female astronaut when she spent six days in space on the space shuttle Challenger. 1992 Roberta Bondar of Ontario was the first Canadian woman to go to outer space on the space shuttle Discovery.

1984 An Ontario Senator representing Toronto-Centre-York, Anne Clare Cools was the first Black person appointed to the Senate of Canada and the first Black female senator in North America.

1986 Sharon Wood of Alberta became the first North American woman to scale Mount Everest.

1991 Rita Johnston won the leadership of the British Columbia Social Credit party and became Premier of the province. She was Canada’s first woman premier.

1993 Kim Campbell of Vancouver, British Columbia became the first (and only) woman to serve as Prime Minister of Canada.

2016 Women constitute 56% of full-time undergraduate students at post-secondary institutions in Canada and the U.S..

Please add your favourite milestone for women in the comments below. •