Women’s History Month – Famous Firsts

Source: www.history.com

Edith Wharton is the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize, 1921

Wharton won the prize for her 1920 novel The Age of Innocence. Like many of Wharton’s books, The Age of Innocence was a critique of the insularity and hypocrisy of the upper class in turn-of-the-century New York. The book has inspired several stage and screen adaptations, and the writer Cecily Von Ziegesar has said that it was the model for her popular Gossip Girl series of books.

Frances Perkins becomes the first female member of a Presidential cabinet, 1933

Perkins, a sociologist and Progressive reformer in New York, served as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor. She kept her job until 1945.

President Ronald Reagan nominates Sandra Day O’Connor to be the first woman on the Supreme Court, 1981

O’Connor was confirmed that September. She did not have much judicial experience when she began her Supreme Court term—she had only been a judge for a few years and had never served on a federal court—but she soon made a name for herself as one of the Court’s most thoughtful centrists. O’Connor retired in 2006.