1941 A massive government and industry media campaign persuades women to take jobs during the war. Almost 7 million women respond, 2 million as industrial "Rosie the Riveters" and 400,000 join the military.
1945 Women industrial workers begin to lose their jobs in large numbers to returning service men, although surveys show 80% want to continue working.
1957 The number of women and men voting is approximately equal for the first time.
1960 Women now earn only 60 cents for every dollar earned by men, a decline since 1955. Women of color earn only 42 cents.
1963 The Equal Pay Act, proposed twenty years earlier, establishes equal pay for men and women performing the same job duties. It does not cover domestics, agricultural workers, executives, administrators or professionals.
1963 Betty Friedan's best-seller, The Feminine Mystique, detailed the "problem that has no name." Five million copies are sold by 1970, laying the groundwork for the modern feminist movement.
1964 Title VII of the Civil Rights Act bars employment discrimination by private employers, employment agencies, and unions based on race, sex, and other grounds. To investigate complaints and enforce penalties, it establishes the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which receives 50,000 complaints of gender discrimination in its first five years.
1966 In response to EEOC inaction on employment discrimination complaints, twenty-eight women found the National Organization for Women to function as a civil rights organization for women.
1968 New York Radical Women garner media attention to the women's movement when they protest the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City.
1968 The first national women's liberation conference is held in Chicago.
1968 The National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) is founded.
1968 National Welfare Rights Organization is formed by activists such as Johnnie Tillmon and Etta Horm. They have 22,000 members by 1969, but are unable to survive as an organization past 1975.
1968 Shirley Chisholm (D-NY) is first Black woman elected to the US Congress.
1970 Women's wages fall to 59 cents for every dollar earned by men. Although nonwhite women earn even less, the gap is closing between white women and women of color.
1970 The Equal Rights Amendment is reintroduced into Congress.
1973 Billie Jean King scores an enormous victory for female athletes when she beats Bobby Riggs in "The tennis tournament watched by nearly 48,000,000 people."
1973 The first battered women's shelters open in the US, in Tucson, Arizona and St. Paul, Minnesota.
1973 In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court establishes a woman's right to abortion, effectively canceling the anti-abortion laws of 46 states.
1973 U.S. Navy announces pilot training for women
1974 MANA, the Mexican-American Women's National Association, organizes as feminist activist organization. By 1990, MANA chapters operate in 16 states; members in 36.
1974 Hundreds of colleges are offering women's studies courses. Additionally, 230 women's centers on college campuses provide support services for women students.
1975 The first women's bank opens, in New York City.
1978 For the first time in history, more women than men enter college.
1981 At the request of women's organizations, President Carter proclaims the first "National Women's History Week," incorporating March 8, International Women's Day.
1981 Sandra Day O'Connor is the first woman ever appointed to the US Supreme Court. In 1993, she is joined by Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
1983 sally ride became the first american women in space
1984 Kathryn D. Sullivan became the first women to walk on the moon
1984 Geraldine Ferraro is the first woman vice-presidential candidate of a major political party (Democratic Party).
1986Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, the Supreme Court finds that sexual harassment is a form of illegal job discrimination