Feminism
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50 free Feminism trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Feminism has been argued over in pamphlets, courtrooms, parliaments and pop songs for more than two centuries, and it has left behind a trail of good stories: stunts that backfired, slogans nobody can agree who coined, and laws with the unlikeliest nicknames. This quiz covers the whole sweep. There are questions on the fight for the vote in Britain, the United States and beyond, on the books and thinkers behind each wave of the movement, on intersectional and Black feminist ideas, and on the films, songs, comics and hashtags that brought the debate into everyday life. It is written for curious players rather than specialists, so most questions give you a clue to reason from. Every answer comes with a short explanation, which makes it handy for a quiz night, a classroom warm-up or a Women's History Month event.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which journalist went undercover as a Playboy Bunny for a 1963 exposé before co-founding Ms. magazine?
Gloria Steinem
Gloria Steinem took a job at the New York Playboy Club for Show magazine and published 'A Bunny's Tale'. The article detailed how the women working in the clubs were treated.
Q 02Which wartime icon's name became attached to the 1943 'We Can Do It!' poster only after a 1980s rediscovery?
Rosie the Riveter
Rosie the Riveter was a 1942 song and a Norman Rockwell painting, with no wartime link to the poster. J. Howard Miller drew it for Westinghouse to show to its own factory workers.
Q 03In the slogan coined by Australian activist Irina Dunn, a woman needs a man like a fish needs what?
A bicycle
A bicycle was Irina Dunn's punchline, though a famous American feminist usually gets the credit. That feminist wrote to Time magazine in 2000 to say the line was Dunn's.
Q 04Which pop artist was shot in 1968 by Valerie Solanas, author of the radical SCUM Manifesto?
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol was shot at the Factory, his Manhattan studio, a year after Solanas had appeared in one of his films. Art critic Mario Amaya was wounded in the same attack.
Q 05Which loose trousers worn by 1850s dress reformers were named after Amelia, editor of the temperance paper The Lily?
Bloomers
Bloomers came to Seneca Falls in 1851 with Elizabeth Smith Miller, who arrived on a visit wearing the outfit. Amelia Bloomer championed it in her paper, and her name stuck.
Q 06Which pageant's 1968 protest in Atlantic City gave rise to the lasting myth that feminists burned bras?
Miss America
Miss America protesters threw bras, girdles and mops into a 'Freedom Trash Can'; an organiser said police would not let them light it. A New York Post story headlined 'Bra Burners and Miss America' likened them to draft-card burners.
Q 07Which singer sampled Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's talk 'We Should All Be Feminists' on the 2013 track 'Flawless'?
Beyoncé
Beyoncé built the second verse of the song from Adichie's TEDx talk. The Nigerian novelist said the track led young people who had never heard of her speech to start discussing it.
Q 08Which European country did not let women vote in federal elections until a referendum in 1971?
Switzerland
Switzerland's men had voted the idea down by two to one in 1959 before saying yes. The last canton, Appenzell Innerrhoden, admitted women voters only when a court ordered it to in 1990.
Q 09Which comic-book superhero appeared on the cover of the first regular issue of Ms. magazine in July 1972?
Wonder Woman
Wonder Woman had been stripped of her superpowers in the comics at the time. The magazine's co-founder lobbied DC to restore them, which it did in 1973.
Q 10Which country lifted a long-standing ban on women driving in June 2018, after decades of protests by activists?
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia was the only country where the law barred women from driving. In 1990, 47 women drove through Riyadh in protest and were arrested, with their passports confiscated.
Q 11Which Margaret Atwood novel inspired the red cloaks and white bonnets worn at women's rights protests worldwide?
The Handmaid's Tale
The Handmaid's Tale is set in Gilead, a theocracy that has overthrown the US government and forces fertile women to bear children for its rulers. Atwood published it in 1985.
Q 12Which Harry Potter star launched the United Nations HeForShe campaign with a 2014 speech in New York?
Emma Watson
Emma Watson spoke as a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador, inviting men and boys to join the push for gender equality. The launch drew more than a million #HeForShe tweets within two weeks.
Q 13Which actress delivers the speech about the conflicting standards women face in Greta Gerwig's 2023 film Barbie?
Q 21Which 1963 Betty Friedan bestseller described the unhappiness of suburban housewives as 'the problem that has no name'?
The Feminine Mystique
The Feminine Mystique began as a reunion survey of Friedan's Smith College classmates, many of whom said they were unhappy as housewives. It is widely credited with sparking second-wave feminism in the US.
Q 22Which suffragist was arrested for voting in the 1872 presidential election and refused to pay her $100 fine?
Susan B. Anthony
Susan B. Anthony told the judge, 'I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty', and she never did. He declined to jail her until she paid, a move that stopped her taking the case to the Supreme Court.
Q 23Which founding US document did Elizabeth Cady Stanton rework in 1848 to read 'all men and women are created equal'?
America Ferrera
America Ferrera plays Gloria, a Mattel employee whose outburst restores Barbie's confidence and helps free the other dolls. The role earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
Q 14Which British pop group turned 'girl power', a slogan from a 1991 punk zine, into a 1990s catchphrase?
Spice Girls
The Spice Girls took the phrase mainstream, but it was coined by the American punk band Bikini Kill. The second issue of the band's zine carried the subtitle 'Girl Power'.
Q 15Which 1980 comedy starring Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton was inspired by a real office workers' group?
9 to 5
9 to 5 grew out of Jane Fonda's meetings with 9to5, a group of women clerical workers that began in Boston. The group ran 'worst boss' contests to publicise how secretaries were treated.
Q 16Which singer imagined how the world would treat her as a male star in 'The Man', from the 2019 album Lover?
Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift directed the video herself and played 'Tyler Swift', a swaggering male alter ego voiced by Dwayne Johnson. It won her the MTV Video Music Award for Best Direction.
Q 17Which test, born in a 1985 comic strip, asks whether two women in a film talk about something besides a man?
Bechdel
The Bechdel test first appeared in Alison Bechdel's strip Dykes to Watch Out For. She credits the idea to her friend Liz Wallace and to the writings of Virginia Woolf.
Q 18Which activist began using the phrase 'Me Too' in 2006, eleven years before the hashtag went viral?
Tarana Burke
Tarana Burke started Me Too as a youth programme addressing sexual violence in her community. Actress Alyssa Milano's 2017 tweet, sent in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein cases, turned it into a global hashtag.
Q 19Which Russian punk collective had members jailed after a 2012 protest in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour?
Pussy Riot
Pussy Riot staged the performance as part of protests against Vladimir Putin's re-election. Three members were convicted of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.
Q 20Which senator's silencing during a 2017 Senate debate inspired the rallying cry 'Nevertheless, she persisted'?
Elizabeth Warren
Elizabeth Warren was reading a 1986 letter by Coretta Scott King when the Senate voted to stop her speaking. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's account of the vote became a feminist slogan.
Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence gave Stanton both her wording and her form. Her version was signed by 68 women and 32 men at the Seneca Falls Convention, about a third of those who attended.
Q 24Which abolitionist's 1851 speech in Ohio gave bell hooks the title of her book Ain't I a Woman?
Sojourner Truth
Sojourner Truth gave the speech at a women's convention in Akron, and it had no title at first. The famous refrain comes from a very different version that Frances Gage published 12 years later.
Q 25Which future First Lady urged her husband in a 1776 letter to 'remember the ladies' when making new laws?
Abigail Adams
Abigail Adams warned John that the ladies were 'determined to foment a Rebellion' if they were ignored. Women, she wrote, would not be bound by laws in which they had no voice.
Q 26Which 1972 US law against sex discrimination in federally funded education is best known for reshaping school sports?
Title IX
Title IX made no explicit mention of sports in its original text. A failed attempt to exempt revenue-earning teams is what fixed its reputation as an athletics law.
Q 27Which 1973 Supreme Court abortion ruling was named for a pseudonymous Texas plaintiff and a Dallas district attorney?
Roe v. Wade
Roe v. Wade set 'Jane Roe', whose real name was Norma McCorvey, against prosecutor Henry Wade. The Supreme Court overruled the decision in 2022.
Q 28Which future Supreme Court justice won five of the six sex-discrimination cases she argued there in the 1970s?
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued them as head of the ACLU's Women's Rights Project. She sometimes chose male plaintiffs, to show that discrimination by sex harmed men as well as women.
Q 29Whose 1991 Senate testimony against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas made sexual harassment a national issue?
Anita Hill
Anita Hill had worked for Thomas at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The Senate still confirmed him 52–48, at the time the narrowest margin for a justice in more than a century.
Q 30Which tennis champion founded the Women's Tennis Association in 1973, the year she beat Bobby Riggs in Houston?
Billie Jean King
Billie Jean King beat the 55-year-old Riggs 6–4, 6–3, 6–3 at the Astrodome in the 'Battle of the Sexes'. An estimated 50 million Americans watched on television.