Women’s History Quiz

Born in England in 1591, Anne Hutchinson emigrated to Boston in 1634. Her adherence to the Free Grace theology was at odds with the established Puritan clergy in the Boston area, and she was tried for slander. She was excommunicated and settled in New Hampshire. She, and most of her family, died during an American Indian attack in 1643.

Anne Bradstreet was born in England in 1612 and emigrated to Massachusetts in 1630. In 1650, she published a book of poetry titled The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America.

Abigail Smith was born in Massachusetts in 1744 and married her third cousin John Adams in 1764. She advocated for better educational opportunities for women and demanded more property rights for married women. She served as first lady between 1797 and 1801.

Betsy Ross was born in Philadelphia in 1752, and her husband supported the Patriot cause. According to family lore, Ross created the first American flag in 1776. However, there is no archival evidence supporting the claim.

Molly Pitcher is the nickname given to Mary Ludwig Hays resulting from her participation in the American Revolution, when she carried pitchers of water to help American soldiers. She appeared on a postage stamp in 1928 in honor of the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Monmouth.

Born in Maine in 1802, Dorothea Dix investigated abuse in mental institutions and prisons. She published reports that led to reforms in New Jersey and Massachusetts, and during the Civil War she supervised the nursing service for the Union army.

Born in South Carolina in 1792, Sarah Moore Grimké was an abolitionist and a member of the women's suffrage movement. She became a Quaker in 1821. She influenced many other activists, including Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, before she died in 1873.

Mott and Stanton were both abolitionists who met at an anti-slavery convention in London in 1840. They organized the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, the first women's rights convention.

Born in Connecticut in 1811, Harriet Beecher Stowe later moved to Cincinnati. She married an abolitionist and published Uncle Tom’s Cabin in serial form in 1851. In its first year, it sold more than 300,000 copies. The book energized anti-slavery forces in the North, while provoking widespread anger in the South.

Born in Massachusetts in 1821, Barton became a teacher and nurse. During the Civil War, she tended to wounded soldiers during several important battles, including Antietam and Fredericksburg. She is best known as the founder and first president of the American Red Cross.

Born in Massachusetts in 1820, Susan B. Anthony was a social reformer and feminist activist who played a pivotal role in the women's suffrage movement. She was arrested when she tried to vote in the 1872 presidential election and was convicted. She was ordered to pay a $100 fine, but refused to do so. She died in 1906. In 1979, the United States Mint began issuing the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin.

The temperance movement was a movement to curb the consumption of alcohol in late 18th and early 19th century America. Frances Willard was born in New York in 1839, and in 1874 she helped found the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. She argued that alcohol destroyed families and that liquor should be banned.

Born in Lithuania in 1869, Emma Goldman emigrated to the United States in 1885. She became an anarchist after the 1886 Haymarket Riot. During World War I she was arrested for opposing the draft and was eventually deported to Russia.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire occurred on the 8th, 9th, and 10th floors of a factory in Greenwich Village. Most of the workers were young immigrant women, and 123 women died during the inferno. Many doors were locked to prevent theft by employees, and the disaster led to new regulations and better working conditions.

Margaret Sanger was born in New York in 1879. She was a birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. She opened the United States’ first birth control clinic in Brooklyn. Birth control was illegal, and nine days after the clinic opened she was arrested. Publicity surrounding her arrest and conviction sparked birth control activism across the country. In 1946, Sanger helped found the International Committee on Planned Parenthood.

A constitutional amendment that granted women’s suffrage was proposed in the US House of Representatives in January 1918. President Woodrow Wilson supported the amendment, and it finally passed the US Senate in June 1919. Tennessee was the 36th state to ratify the amendment, which provided the final ratification necessary to add the 19th Amendment to the Constitution in August 1920.

“Flappers” flaunted social norms during the 1920s. They wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, smoked cigarettes, drank alcohol, and drove automobiles. The flapper style disappeared after the Stock Market Crash of 1929.

Edith Wharton was born in New York in 1862, and attempted her first novel at age 11. She was a prolific writer who authored 15 novels, 7 novellas, and 85 short stories. She won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1921 with her novel Age of Innocence.

Addams is known as the "mother" of social work. She was a settlement activist, social worker, public philosopher, sociologist, author, and a leading advocate of women's suffrage and world peace. In 1889, Jane Addams co-founded Chicago's Hull House, a settlement house that provided educational and recreational facilities for European immigrant women and children.

Born in Massachusetts in 1880, Frances Perkins was a sociologist and workers-rights advocate. Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed her Secretary of Labor in 1933, and she served until 1945.

Rosie the Riveter became an icon that represented women’s contributions to the home front during World War II. Three million women entered the workforce and many of them worked in factories that produced war material. Rose Will Monroe, a riveter at a B-24 factory in Ypsilanti, Michigan, is thought to be the inspiration for Rosie the Riveter.

Born in New York in 1884, Eleanor married her fifth cousin Franklin Roosevelt in 1905. She maintained a highly visible role as First Lady between 1933 and 1945, and became the first chairperson of the UN Commission on Human Rights, influencing the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Simone de Beauvoir was a French writer. In 1949 she published The Second Sex, which examines the treatment of women throughout history. The book was translated into English and played an important role in the development of feminism in America.

Born in Pennsylvania in 1907, Rachel Carson was a marine biologist, a writer, and an environmentalist. In 1962, she published Silent Spring, which examined the effects of DDT on the environment. Her book led to a ban on the use of DDT for agricultural purposes in 1972.

Betty Friedan was born in Illinois in 1921. She studied psychology at Smith College and Berkeley, and later worked as a journalist. She published The Feminine Mystique in 1963. The book examined why many housewives felt dissatisfied with their lives. It is widely credited with sparking second-wave feminism in the United States. She was also the co-founder and first president of the National Organization for Women (NOW).

Originally, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 only outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national origin, but Virginia Democratic Congressman Howard Smith offered an amendment that added sex as a protected category. His amendment passed with the votes of Republicans and Southern Democrats.

Born in New York in 1924, Shirley Chisholm became a teacher and later served in the New York State Assembly. She was elected to Congress in 1968 and served until 1983. In 1972, she made an unsuccessful bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Norma McCorvey, under the alias of Jane Roe, filed suit in the US District Court to overturn a Texas law that restricted access to abortion. The case went to the US Supreme Court in 1971, and the justices issued a 7–2 ruling that the Texas law violated an implied right to privacy in the 14th Amendment’s due process clause.

Title IX was a portion of the 1972 Education Amendments, which banned discrimination against women in education. It greatly expanded women’s participation in sports at the high school and college level.

Bobby Riggs had been a tennis star during the 1940s, and he came out of retirement in 1973 to play against Billie Jean King. The match was held at the Houston Astrodome, and had a worldwide audience of 90 million viewers. Riggs initially took a lead, but King eventually won.

Sandra Day O’Connor was born in El Paso in 1930 and graduated from Stanford Law School. She served as the Attorney General, a legislator, and a judge in Arizona before President Ronald Reagan appointed her to the Supreme Court in 1981. She retired in 2005.

Sally Ride was born in Los Angeles in 1951 and earned a Ph.D. in physics from Stanford. She joined NASA in 1978 and became the first American woman to go into space as a crew member on the space shuttle Challenger in 1983. Ride remains the youngest American astronaut to have traveled to space, having done so at the age of 32.

Geraldine Ferraro was born in New York in 1935 and worked as a public school teacher before training as a lawyer. She served in the US House of Representatives from 1979 to 1985. In 1984, Walter Mondale, the Democratic nominee for president, chose Ferraro as his running mate. They lost the election to Ronald Reagan. She ran unsuccessfully for the US Senate in 1992, but later served as Ambassador to the UN Commission on Human Rights.

Born in Maryland in 1940, Nancy Pelosi later moved to San Francisco and ran for Congress in 1987. Before being elected Speaker of the House, she served as the House minority whip. She served as Speaker from 2007 to 2011.