Welcome to the Woman's History Timeline. Click on a decade above to open a list of key events. Click on a key event to find out more about what happened. Click on LISTEN icons to hear interviews and special archive content about the period.
Victorian Times: for background on women's history during the Victorian era visit BBC Women's History and you can test your knowledge with the women's rights game.
Listen again to the Balloon debate that launched the Woman's Hour Time line and hear why the availability of contraception won the title of most influental event to impact on the lives of women.
Comments: If you have specialist knowledge of one of the events we have chosen, or would like to suggest an addition, please let us know with the form below.
This photograph must have been taken about 1953. The baby is me and the elderly lady is my great grandmother, my father's grandmother. Although I have no memory of her except this and one other photo she is very special to me. She was a woman who did what she thought was right even if it meant going against the norms of society. She supported the suffragettes and was divorced from her husband, my great grandfather at a time when divorce was unusual. My grandmother, her daughter inherited much of her spirit. Active all her life in her early years she worked in Marie Stopes clinics (which she did not tell me about) and organised evacuees out of London (which she did tell me about). I wish now of course that I had asked my grandmother more about her life and that of her mother and recorded it.
