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Women's Rights

Reaching the summit of the Matterhorn made Annie Smith Peck well-known.

Three Things to Know About Pants-Wearing Mountaineer Annie Smith Peck

Peck wasn’t wealthy and her family, who did have money, didn’t approve of her globe-trotting, mountain-climbing, pants-wearing lifestyle

The British Navy was a big deal in the 1700s.

Jane Squire and the Longitude Wars

The sixteenth-century debate over how to determine longitude had a lot of participants—and one woman

A Coco Chanel Little Black Dress, released in 1926.

Why Coco Chanel Created the Little Black Dress

The style icon created a… well…. style icon in 1926

In this Saturday March 29, 2014 file photo, a woman drives a car on a highway in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as part of a campaign to defy Saudi Arabia's ban on women driving. Saudi Arabia authorities announced Tuesday Sept. 26, 2017, that women will be allowed to drive for the first time in the ultra-conservative kingdom from next summer, fulfilling a key demand of women's rights activists who faced detention for defying the ban.

Trending Today

Saudi Women Win the Right to Drive

Next June, women in the ultra-patriarchal society will become the last in the world to receive driver’s licenses

In the dress (now in the Smithsonian collections), on September 20, 1973, Billie Jean King crushed Bobby Riggs with her serve and volley game, winning the match 6-4, 6-3, 6-3.

How Billie Jean King Picked Her Outfit for the Battle of the Sexes Match

King beat self-proclaimed male chauvinist Bobby Riggs and her victory still stands as an accomplishment for feminism

A man named Georgios Papanicolaou invented the Pap smear, but Elizabeth Stern helped figure out how to interpret it.

Why The Pap Test Could Also Be Called the Stern Test

Elizabeth Stern played a vital role in cervical cancer testing and treatment

Manasi Kulkarni on her farm in Nandgaon, Maharashtra, India

The Intrepid Teachers Bringing Internet Access To Women In Rural India

The gender disparity among internet users in the country’s small villages is staggering. A program called Internet Saathi aims to help

An unknown woman spinning, circa 1900.

‘Spinster’ and ‘Bachelor’ Were, Until 2005, Official Terms for Single People

Being single is hard enough without these pejoratives.

This is what a touring car looked like in 1915.

Before She Was an Etiquette Authority, Emily Post Was a Road Warrior

Post didn’t drive herself, but she laid claim to her own authority on the road in other ways

Katherine "Kate" Murray Millett in Milan, Italy, in 1975.

Kate Millett, Pioneering Feminist Author, Has Died at 82

Her book ‘Sexual Politics’ was a defining text of second-wave feminism

Emma Nutt was just the leading edge of the wave.

Long Before Siri, Emma Nutt’s Voice Was on the Other End of the Line

She was the first female telephone operator. Before her, telephone operators were teenaged boys. That didn’t go so well

An Indian woman holds a bucket and walks to relieve herself in the open, on World Toilet Day on the outskirts of Jammu, India, in 2014.

Indian Court Grants Woman Divorce Over Husband’s Refusal to Install a Household Toilet

Relieving oneself in open fields is common practice in many parts of India, but the government is trying to change that

Carefree, reckless, flappers seemed to enjoy living on the edge, like these atop Chicago’s Sherman Hotel.

History of Now

Flappers Took the Country by Storm, But Did They Ever Truly Go Away

Women of the Roaring Twenties had a lot in common with today’s millennials

"Ignorance = Fear / Silence = Death" by Keith Haring, 1989

New Exhibit Captures Nearly Eight Decades of Protest Art

The show incorporates the various ways artists have responded to the politics and social problems of their times since the 1940s

Illustration made using an 1851 portrait of Mitchell by H. Dassell and a false-color image of supernova remnant Cassiopeia A by NASA.

Women Who Shaped History

When Girls Studied Planets and the Skies Had No Limits

Maria Mitchell, America’s first female astronomer, flourished at a time when both sexes “swept the sky”

Charlotte Woodward Pierce was just a teenager when she signed the pro-women's-rights "Declaration of Sentiments." She was the only signer of that document to live to see women get the vote.

Only One Woman Who Was at the Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention Lived to See Women Win the Vote

Charlotte Woodward Pierce was a teenager at the Seneca Falls convention for women’s rights. She was 91 when women finally went to vote in 1920

Sheila Michaels explained the power of the honorific "Ms." on the radio in 1969. Word of the broadcast got to Gloria Steinem was looking for a name for her new magazine. The first regular issue of Ms. magazine hit the newsstands in July 1972.

Sheila Michaels, the Feminist Who Made ‘Ms.’ Mainstream, Has Died at 78

The activist championed “Ms.” as a title that would allow women to be seen independently of their marital status

Horatio Greenough’s 12-ton marble statue of George Washington heralds the newly reopened west wing gallery.

Renovated Museum Wing Delves Into Untold Chapters of American History

“The Nation We Build Together” questions American ideals through exhibits on democracy, religion, diversity and more

Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan Macy at a New York flower show, circa 1913.

Three Big Ableist Myths About the Life of Helen Keller

The simple story that’s usually told about her today reflects cultural biases that have nothing to do with her actual life

The "abortion pill" (actually two separate medications) can be taken up to 10 weeks after pregnancy, according to the FDA.

The Science Behind the “Abortion Pill”

Legal or not, more American women are opting for abortion by medication. We asked doctors: How safe is it?

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