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.
My mother, Betty was born in Vilna, Lithuania in 1906 at the height of the pogroms of Czarist Russia.
She arrived in England with her parents and younger brother in 1910 and lived until the Second World War in the slums of the East End.
Her father was deported back to Russia in early 1914 because of his anarchist activities and his membership to the anarchist group which was involved in the "Sidney Street Seige" in Whitchapel in 1911.
In 1925 at the age of 18 she joined the Communist Party in order to procure better working conditions for the women in the garment trade.
It was the era of the "Flapper Girl" not unlike the womens lib movments of the 1960's.
