Nancy Landon Kassebaum is the first woman to serve in the U.S. Senate having been neither elected to serve first in the House of Representatives nor appointed to fill out the remainder of a term from a husband after his death while in office.
Electrical engineer Judith Resnik is selected for NASA’s astronaut program and serves as a mission specialist aboard the space shuttle Discovery. In 1986, at age thirty-six, she perishes along with the entire crew of the space shuttle Challenger.
Faye Wattleton is elected the president of Planned Parenthood; she is the first African American and youngest person to be elected president.
Maude de Victor is a navy veteran and a veterans’ benefits counselor who makes the link between the spraying of Agent Orange in Vietnam and veterans’ health problems and cancer-related illnesses.
The U.S. Army integrates women into the formerly all-male body, dismantling the Women’s Army Corps, which began during World War II.
Women Against Violence in the Media do a “Take Back the Night” march to draw attention to a woman’s right to walk at night without fear and to honor and acknowledge women survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and other forms of violence against women.
Lakota Indian educator Patricia Locke advocates for the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, which sets into federal law the right of Native Americans to freely practice their spiritual traditions. She helps organize seventeen tribally run colleges and is awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1991.
Feminist artist Judy Chicago completes a huge art project called “The Dinner Party” and begins to tour the country with it.