Women's History
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100 free Women's History trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
11 free Women's History trivia questions with answers. Women's History trivia lives in two places on BrainPickle. This page is the shorter set; the main quiz is Womens History trivia, with our deepest question pool on the topic and a source behind every answer.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which country, in 1893, became the first self-governing nation to give women the vote in national elections?
New Zealand
New Zealand passed its Electoral Act on September 19, 1893, the first self-governing country to let all women vote in parliamentary elections.
Q 02Which scientist was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize?
Marie Curie
Marie Skłodowska-Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, receiving the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 with her husband Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel. She later won a second Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911.
Q 03Who, in 1960, became the first woman in the world to be elected head of government of a modern nation?
Sirimavo Bandaranaike
Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, became prime minister after her Sri Lanka Freedom Party won the July 1960 election, the world's first elected woman national leader.
Q 04Which author wrote the influential feminist work 'A Room of One's Own'?
Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf published the extended essay in 1929; its thesis is that a woman must have money and a room of her own to write fiction.
Q 05In which modern Olympic Games did women first officially compete?
1900 Paris
1900 Paris saw around 22 women compete; sailor Hélène de Pourtalès, born Helen Barbey in New York, became the first female Olympic champion.
Q 06Which US constitutional amendment, adopted in August 1920, barred denying the vote on the basis of sex?
The Nineteenth
The Nineteenth Amendment reached the required 36 state ratifications when Tennessee approved it on 18 August 1920; Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified it on 26 August.
Q 07Which English mathematician, who wrote about Babbage's proposed Analytical Engine, is often called the first computer programmer?
Ada Lovelace
Ada Lovelace's 1843 notes on Babbage's Analytical Engine included a method for computing Bernoulli numbers, widely called the first computer program.
Q 08Which seamstress and NAACP secretary refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery in 1955?
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks, a seamstress and secretary of the Montgomery NAACP, was arrested on 1 December 1955; her arrest triggered the 381-day Montgomery bus boycott.
Q 09Who became the first woman in space, flying a solo mission aboard Vostok 6 on 16 June 1963?
Valentina Tereshkova
Valentina Tereshkova, a former textile worker and amateur parachutist, orbited Earth 48 times over nearly three days aboard Vostok 6 in June 1963.
Q 10Who founded the Women's Social and Political Union in 1903, dedicated to 'deeds, not words'?
Emmeline Pankhurst
Emmeline Pankhurst founded the WSPU in Manchester in October 1903 with her daughter Christabel; she had earlier co-founded the Women's Franchise League in 1889.
Q 11Who was the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States, graduating in 1849?
Elizabeth Blackwell
Elizabeth Blackwell graduated first in her class from Geneva Medical College in New York on 23 January 1849; she later co-founded the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children in 1857.
Q 12In 1932 Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo and nonstop across which ocean?
The Atlantic
The Atlantic crossing earned her the Distinguished Flying Cross; she also helped found the Ninety-Nines, an organisation for women pilots.
Q 13Florence Nightingale rose to fame organising care for wounded soldiers during which war?
The Crimean War
Q 21Hollywood star Hedy Lamarr co-invented what during World War II?
A radio guidance system
Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil patented a frequency-hopping radio guidance system for torpedoes in 1942; the idea foreshadowed spread-spectrum techniques used in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
Q 22Jeannette Rankin, first woman elected to Congress, was the only member to vote against what in 1941?
Declaring war on Japan
Jeannette Rankin cast the lone vote against declaring war on Japan on 8 December 1941, 388 to 1; a Montana pacifist, she had also voted against the 1917 declaration of war on Germany.
Q 23What is Rosalind Franklin's famous X-ray image of DNA known as?
Photo 51
Florence Nightingale led 38 nurses to the British army hospital at Scutari during the Crimean War in 1854; her night rounds earned her the nickname 'the Lady with the Lamp'.
Q 14Harriet Tubman made roughly how many Underground Railroad missions, rescuing about 70 people?
13
Harriet Tubman made about 13 trips back to Maryland's Eastern Shore, guiding roughly 70 enslaved people to freedom; she later served the Union Army as a scout and spy.
Q 15How old was Malala Yousafzai when she became the youngest Nobel laureate in history, in 2014?
17
Malala Yousafzai, born 12 July 1997, was 17 when the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize was announced that October; she shared it with Indian campaigner Kailash Satyarthi.
Q 16Katherine Johnson calculated trajectories and launch windows for which early spaceflight programme?
Project Mercury
Katherine Johnson computed the trajectory for Alan Shepard's 1961 Project Mercury flight, and John Glenn asked her to check the computer's orbital numbers by hand before his 1962 mission.
Q 17Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai founded which tree-planting organisation in Kenya?
The Green Belt Movement
Wangari Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977; it has planted tens of millions of trees across Kenya, and she won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004.
Q 18Sojourner Truth's 'Ain't I a Woman?' speech was delivered in 1851 at a women's convention in which city?
Akron, Ohio
Sojourner Truth spoke at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron on 29 May 1851; the famous 'Ain't I a Woman?' wording comes from Frances Gage's 1863 retelling.
Q 19Junko Tabei of Japan was the first woman to reach the summit of which mountain?
Mount Everest
Junko Tabei reached the summit of Mount Everest on 16 May 1975, twelve days after an avalanche buried her team's camp; in 1992 she became the first woman to complete the Seven Summits.
Q 20Kathrine Switzer became the first registered woman to run which race in 1967?
The Boston Marathon
Kathrine Switzer ran the 1967 Boston Marathon entered as 'K.V. Switzer'; official Jock Semple tried to tear off her bib mid-race, and the AAU then barred women from competing alongside men.
Photo 51, the X-ray diffraction image of B-form DNA, was taken in May 1952 by her student Raymond Gosling; Franklin died of ovarian cancer at 37 in 1958, four years before the Nobel Prize.
Q 24Which 1940 Frida Kahlo painting sold for $54.7 million at Sotheby's in November 2025?
The Dream (The Bed)
The Dream (The Bed) shows Kahlo asleep beneath a papier-mâché skeleton; it sold for $54.7 million at Sotheby's New York in November 2025, then the highest auction price for a work by a woman.
Q 25Which group organised the first 'Woman's Day', forerunner of International Women's Day, in New York in 1909?
The Socialist Party of America
The Socialist Party of America held the first National Woman's Day in New York on 28 February 1909; Clara Zetkin then proposed an international day at the 1910 Copenhagen socialist women's conference.
Q 26Who argued successfully at Seneca Falls in 1848 to keep women's suffrage in the Declaration of Sentiments?
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass, the convention's only African American attendee, spoke for the suffrage resolution, which passed narrowly; 100 of the roughly 300 present signed the declaration.
Q 27The Seneca Falls Convention was organised by local Quaker women together with which non-Quaker activist?
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the only non-Quaker among the five organisers, drafted the Declaration of Sentiments; they planned the July 1848 convention around Philadelphia Quaker Lucretia Mott's visit to the area.
Q 28Which element did Marie and Pierre Curie announce first, in July 1898?
Polonium
Polonium, named for Poland, was announced by the Curies in July 1898, five months before radium; Marie Curie won the 1903 Physics and 1911 Chemistry Nobel Prizes.
Q 29In which year did Marie Curie become the first woman professor at the University of Paris?
1906
After Pierre's death in April 1906 Marie Curie took over his chair, giving her first Sorbonne lecture on 5 November 1906; in 1995 she became the first woman entombed in the Panthéon on her own merits.
Q 30Women in which European country could not vote at the federal level until 1971?
Switzerland
France waited until 1944 and Greece until 1952; one Swiss canton held out locally until 1990.