• Twelve women from Smith College form the first intercollegiate women's tennis club. (June 6, 1881)
  
• The first women's intercollegiate basketball game is held between the University of California-Berkeley and Stanford University. Male spectators are barred. (April 4, 1896)
  
• Lizzie Arlington becomes the first woman to sign a contract with a minor league baseball team. (1898)
  
• Nineteen women debut as the first competitors at the Paris Olympic Games. Charlotte Cooper becomes the first woman to win an Olympic gold medal. (1900)
  
• Introduced into the United States by England's Constance Applebee, field hockey quickly becomes the most popular outdoor team sport of young American women. (1901)
  
• Thirty-six women compete at the Olympic Games in gymnastics, tennis, archery and figure skating. (1908)
  
• Long distance swimmer Annette Kellerman is arrested for exposing her legs while swimming in Boston Harbor in an indecent one-piece bathing suit. (1910)
  
• Women are first allowed to swim in the Olympic Games. Australian Fanny Durack - wearing a long woolen swimsuit with a skirt - wins the 100m freestyle to become the first female champion in the Games; impressively, her time was the same as the men's winner. (1912)
  
• Suzanne Lenglen makes her triumphant debut at Wimbledon. She wins the first of her six singles championships and makes a shocking fashion statement in her calf-length, one-piece dress that exposes her arms and allows her to be aggressive in her play. (1919)
  
• Jeux Feminins, the first all-women Olympics, is held in Monaco. Three hundred women from five countries compete in many sports not permitted in the Olympic Games such as track and field and basketball. They are so successful that they are held again in 1922 and 1923. (1921)
  
• Bessie Coleman is the first African-American, male or female, to earn a pilot's license. All of her applications to aviation school in the United States are rejected, so she travels to France for training and certification. (June 15, 1921)
  
• The Olympic Winter Games debut in Chamonix, France, with events for women in figure skating (individual and pairs). (1924)
  
• Gertrude Ederle becomes the first woman to swim the English Channel. Her time of 14 hours and 31 minutes breaks the men's record. (1926)
  
• Track and field for women makes its debut at the Amsterdam Olympic Games. When several women reportedly collapse at the conclusion of the 800-meter race, officials seize on the reports as a pretext for banning women from running any distance greater than 200 meters in Olympic competition till 1960. (1928) HeroinesCanadaT&F Gymnasts MyrtleCook, Matchless Six, Robinson 100m, Robinson
  
• Mildred "Babe" Didrikson Zaharias is the first woman to win medals in three Olympic events - two gold and one silver. She is denied the third gold when she goes over the high jump bar head first - a technique barred by rules at the time. (1932)
  
• Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. (1932)
  
• Swimmer Hideko Maehata of Japan becomes the first woman of color to win a gold medal in the Olympic Games. (1936)
  
• Sonja Henie, becomes the first (and as of 1999, the only) woman ever to win three Olympic gold medals in individual figure skating competition. (1936)
  
• Tennis champion Helen Wills Moody wins a record eighth ladies' singles title at Wimbledon. (1938)
  
• The All American Girls Professional Baseball League was formed. At its peak in 1948, it consisted of 10 teams and drew nearly a million fans. (1943)
  
• Alice Coachman becomes the first African-American to win an Olympic gold medal. (1948)
  
• Larissa Latynina of Russia wins the first of her 18 Olympic medals at the Melbourne Olympic Games. (1952)
  
• Althea Gibson becomes the first woman of color tennis player to win Wimbledon and Forest Hills. (1957)
  
• Wilma Rudolph overcomes childhood polio to capture three Olympic gold medals at the Rome Olympic Games and the title of fastest woman in the world. She inspires generations of girls and women to participate in track and field. (1960)
  
• Volleyball is introduced as the first team sport for women in the Olympic Games. (October 23, 1964)
  
• Kathryn Switzer becomes the first woman to officially enter the Boston Marathon when she registers as K. Switzer. When officials see that she is a woman they try to remove her from the race. She finishes in four hours and 20 minutes. (1967)
  
• Kathy Kusner becomes the first woman ever licensed to race on the flat track in major legalized gambling races after winning a sex discrimination suit against the Maryland Race Commission. The Commission had denied her a license claiming that she "lacked sufficient strength to control
  a horse in competition and was more at the level of an exercise boy in terms of skill." Kusner goes on to become an Olympic silver medalist, a two-time U.S. National Horse Show champion and the first female jockey and champion in South Africa's history. (1968)
  
• Title IX, the federal law that opened the door of opportunity for girls and women to participate in sports by prohibiting gender discrimination in schools and colleges that receive federal funding, is signed by President Richard M. Nixon. (June 23, 1972)
  
• Six women compete in the New York City marathon and stage a protest of the ruling that they must start the race 10 minutes ahead of the men. When the time elapses, the women get up and run with the men. The Amateur Athletic Union adds 10 minutes to their finishing times, the women sue and simultaneous start times soon become the rule. (1972)
  
• Before Title IX, young women were 7% of the students participating in high school sports. In 2001, young women are 41.5% of the students participating in high school sports. In raw numbers, we went from 300,000 to 2.7 million athletes-a gain of over
  800%.

Title IX Defined

No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.
(Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. To honor one of its key Congressional sponsors, it was named the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act on October 9, 2002. )