Just First
The first woman to serve as U.S. Attorney General.
Janet Reno, 1993
The first woman of color to be elected to the U.S. Senate.
Carol Moseley Braun (D-IL), 1992
State with the most women members of Congress.
California!
The first woman ever to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Sandra Day O'Connor, 1981
The first Native American to serve as Secretary of the Interior and in a presidential cabinet.
Deb Haaland, 2021
The first woman to serve as U.S. Secretary of State, 1997.
Madeleine K. Albright
The first lesbian elected to Congress and the first woman in Congress for this state in 1998; also the first lesbian elected to the US Senate in 2012.
Tammy Baldwin (D-WI)
The first woman to serve as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), 2007
The first Hispanic and the third female member of the Supreme Court.
Sonia Sotomayor
The first woman, the first woman of color, the first Black woman, and the first South Asian woman elected to the office of Vice President.
Kamala Harris
The first woman to be a major party's candidate for president.
Hillary Clinton, 2016
The first woman elected to the US Senate from New York state and the only First Lady ever elected to public office.
Hillary Clinton
The first Muslim women ever elected to Congress.
Ilhan Omar (D-MN) & Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), 2018
She replaced Ruth Bader Ginsberg on the Supreme Court.
Amy Coney Barrett
The first Black woman to serve as U.S. Secretary of State and the first woman to hold the post of National Security Advisor to the President.
Condoleezza Rice
The first woman to run on a major party's national ticket as Vice President.
Geraldine A. Ferraro (D-NY),1984
The first South Asian and second Black woman elected to the Senate.
Kamala Harris (D-CA), 2016
The first openly bisexual person elected to the US Senate.
Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), 2012
The first Black woman ever nominated to the Supreme Court.
Ketanji Brown Jackson, 2022
The first Black woman nominee for vice president of the United States. She ran on the Progressive Party ticket.
Charlotta Spears Bass, 1952
The first woman to run as vice president on a national GOP ticket.
Sarah Palin
The first woman to serve in both houses of Congress; later she was nominated for the presidency at the Republican national convention.
Margaret Chase Smith (R-ME)
The first woman to hold federal office in the US; elected to the House as a Republican from Montana in 1916.
Jeannette Pickering Rankin
The first Jewish woman and the second woman ever to serve on the Supreme Court.
Ruth Bader Ginsberg, 1993
The first Black woman and the second woman to serve as U.S. Attorney General.
Loretta Lynch, 2015-2017
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the first woman to run for the U.S. House of Representatives from this state. The year was 1866. She ran as an Independent -- even though women were not eligible to vote -- and received 24 votes of 12,000 that were cast.
What is New York State?