1. Women’s History Month

2. 1809 Mary Kies becomes the first woman to be granted a patent. It was for weaving straw with silk.

3. 1849 Elizabeth Blackwell becomes the first U.S. woman to have a medical degree.

4. 1901 Annie Edson Taylor becomes the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

5. 1872 Victoria Claflin Woodhull became the first US woman nominated for President of the United States by the National Radical Reformers party.

6. 1981 Sandra Day O’Conner first woman to be appointed to the United States Supreme Court.

7. 1997 Madeleine Albright becomes the first woman selected as Secretary of State and the highest ranking female government official ever.

8. Women by the Numbers 1.6 million –Number of women veterans of the armed forces. 56% –Percentage of female college students. 2.9 million –Estimated lifetime earnings of a woman with a professional degree that works full time all year long.

9. Women That Run the Business

10. Shelly Lazarus Chairman and CEO of the biggest ad agency, Ogilvy & Mather. Some of the companies clients include: Ford, IBM, Mattel and American Express. In 1997 she took over for former CEO Charlotte Beers. Mary Kay Ash (1915- 2001) Founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics. The Company currently has over 300,000 sales people in 19 countries and $1 billion in sales.

11. Cathleen Black President of Hearst Magazine Division, the largest publisher of magazines worldwide. Some of its publications include: Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, Esquire and Harper’s Bazaar. Meg Whitman President of CEO of eBay Technologies, arguably the largest personal online trading company. She is steadily leading her company as one of the few dot-com enterprises to be realizing a profit.

12. That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman? ~Sojourner Truth, 1851 Akron, Ohio

13. Sojourner Truth Carrie Chapman Catt

14. If this be true, the time is past when we should say: "Men and women of America, look upon that wonderful idea up there; see, one day it will come down." Instead, the time has come to shout aloud in every city, village and hamlet, and in tones so clear and jubilant that they will reverberate from every mountain peak and echo from shore to shore: "The woman's Hour has struck." Suppose suffragists as a whole do not believe a crisis has come and do not extend their hands to grasp the victory, what will happen? Why, we shall all continue to work and our cause will continue to hang, waiting for those who possess a clearer vision and more daring enterprise. On the other hand, suppose we reach out with united earnestness and determination to grasp our victory while it still hangs a bit too high? Has any harm been done? None! ~Carrie Chapman Catt, The Crisis

15. Somewhere out in this audience may even be someone who will one day follow in my footsteps, and preside over the White House as the President's spouse. I wish him well! ~ Barbara Bush from the 1990 Wellesley College Commencement You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along."... You must do the thing you think you cannot do. ~Eleanor Roosevelt, 1960