2000 |
After 19 years, the last women leave the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp. |
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2000 |
Grandmother Jennifer Murray is the first woman to fly solo round the world in a helicopter. |
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2000 |
The Queen Mother celebrates her 100th birthday, the first member of the Royal Family to reach her centenary. |
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2001 |
Irene Zubaida Khan becomes the first woman, first Asian woman and first Muslim to guide the world's largest human rights organisation when she becomes Secretary General of the UK based, Amnesty International |
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2001 |
Clara Furse is the first female chief executive of the 200-year-old London Stock Exchange. |
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2001 |
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2002 |
Sheila Macdonald is the first woman to become an executor of a UK high street bank, the Co-operative. |
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2002 |
Caroline Hamilton and Ann Daniels reach the North Pole becoming the first all-female team to trek to both poles. They trekked to the South Pole in January 2000. |
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2002 |
At Leicester Cathedral the Very Reverend Vivienne Francis Faull is the first woman priest in the UK to be installed as a provost, making her the most senior woman priest in the Church of England. |
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2003 |
Baroness Amos was appointed Secretary of State for International Development making her the first black woman cabinet minister. |
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2003 |
The Sexual Offences Act (2003) provides new legislation against abuse by people who work with children, and updates the laws of sexual abuse within families. |
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2003 |
Professor Julia Polak receives a DBE for services to medicine in the new field of tissue engineering. |
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2003 |
JK Rowling, creator of the Harry Potter books, became the world's best paid author. |
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2004 |
Margaret Simey, social reformer and one of Liverpool's most formidable politicians, dies aged 98. |
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2004 |
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2004 |
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2004 |
Kelly Holmes becomes the first British 800 metre runner to win an Olympic title since 1980 and the first woman since 1964. She is also the first British runner to win two gold medals since the 1920 Olympics. |
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2004 |
Founder of the Green Belt Movement, Wangari Muta Maathai becomes the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
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2004 |
Condoleezza Rice becomes the first female national security adviser to a US president. |
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2005 |
Ellen MacArthur becomes the fastest person to sail single-handed around the world and at 28 years old, the youngest person to receive a damehood. |
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2005 |
A sculpture celebrating the disabled artist, Alison Lapper, naked and 8½ months pregnant is displayed on the Fourth Plinth in London's Trafalgar Square. |
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2005 |
Andrea Levy's novel Small Island was chosen as the best Orange Prize for Fiction winner over the 10 years that the Prize has been running. |
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2005 |
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf becomes the world's first black female president, and Africa's first elected female leader when she won the Liberian elections. |
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2005 |
Under the biggest overhaul of adoption laws in 30 years, unmarried and same-sex couples can now adopt children together for the first time more on adoption |
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2005 |
The Civil Partnership Act (2004) brings same sex-couples similar legal rights to married couples. Two women, Shannon Sickles and Grainne Close became the first British gay couple to exchange vows at Belfast City Hall, and England's first gay couple tie the knot in Brighton |
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2006 |
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2006 |
Shirley Ryder becomes the first female president of the National Association of Master Bakers - and at the age of 39 years, the youngest ever president. |
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2006 |
The White Paper on Pensions aims to make 7 percent of women eligible for a full basic state pension by 2010 as opposed to 30 percent now. |
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2006 |
Elizabeth Howard with her half-sister Keeley Hall become the first British children of a sperm donor father to meet each other face to face. They were born within two months of each other in 1972. |
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2006 |
St Hilda's, the last all-women college at Oxford University, ends more than a century of tradition by voting to open its doors to men. |
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2006 |
Michelle Bachelet is sworn in as Chile's first woman president. |
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2006 |
Angela Merkel, leader of the Christian Democratic Union becomes Germany's first woman chancellor. |
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