Timeline

1869 Women get accepted to Cambridge University but are not allowed to be awarded degrees. Sarah Emily Davies was the co-founder and first Mistress of Girton College Cambridge for women
1898 First woman gets elected to a Professional Engineering Institution. Hertha Ayrton becomes first member of Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET)
1908 Alice Perry was the first woman to graduate with a degree in engineering from Queen's College, Galway
1918 Some women get the vote for the first time. The Act of Representation of the People gives the vote to women over 30 who owned property (or whose husbands did)
1919 Women's Engineering Society forms
1920 Women allowed to obtain degrees at Oxford University
1920 The Sex Discrimination Removal Act allows women access to the legal profession and accountancy
1922 Claudia Parsons becomes one of the first women in engineering to graduate with an engineering qualification from Loughborough University. She later became the first woman to circumnavigate the globe by car.
1923 Dorothee Pullinger was working on the Galloway car specifically for women
1924 The Electrical Association for Women established: Women encouraged to use electricity in the home gives them more time, and allows them to enter the labour market
1928 The Equal Franchise Act 1928 gives equal voting rights to men and women for the first time.
Both men and women over the age of 21 get the vote.
1929 Women become 'persons' in their own right, by order of the privy council
1930 Amy Johnson becomes the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia
1932 Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic
1941 Women called back to service in engineering and technical roles as the Second World War breaks out.
The National Service Act is passed introducing conscription for women
1942 Women play prominent role as airline pilots and engineers in WW2:
Amy Johnson and others fly spitfires, and many other women manufacture them, and Tilly Shilling invents valve to stop engines stalling
1943 Women constituted 75% of the workforce at Bletchley Park - the site for code breaking - in the Second World War: "I told you to leave no stone unturned to get staff, but I had no idea you had taken me so literally" said Churchill of the recruitment of women.
1944 Women thanked for their help but in the war but told they weren't needed any longer
1945 Waterloo Bridge opens in London: Herbert Morrison officially opens Waterloo Bridge with no mention of the women who had played such a large part in constructing it.
1945 First women admitted as Fellows of the Royal Society. Kathleen Lonsdale and Marjory Stephenson were the first two women admitted
1948 Women given equal status with men at Cambridge University
1948 Introduction of the National Health Service. Free health care for all, as previously only those with insurance (usually men) benefitted
1956 Legal reforms say that teachers and civil servants should receive equal pay
1957 The launch of the Sputnik satellite by Russia starts the space race.
Women in America encouraged to work in science and engineering.
1958 Mary Jackson becomes first black female engineer at NASA (Featured in the film Hidden Figures)
1961 Parliamentary report concludes that UK women should teach science and engineering rather than practice it
1962 Rosalind Franklin's colleagues awarded the Nobel Prize for their work on DNA. Franklin died in 1958b and her contribution was not recognised
1964 Dorothy Hodgkin awarded the Nobel Prize for her work on X-ray crystallography
1965 Barbara Castle is appointed Minister of Transport, becoming first female Minister of State
1968 Ford machinists strike for equal pay. Barbara Castle intervenes and the strike ends

1969 Year of Women in Engineering
1970 Equal Pay Act comes into being: Women are legally entitled to the same pay for the same work as men
1971 Parliamentary campaign opens up scientific and technical posts to women in the civil service
1979 Margaret Thatcher becomes Britain's first female Prime Minister...and she was a scientist
1984 Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) established
1985 Equal Pay Act (Amended) allows women to be paid the same as men for work of equal value
1991 Helen Sharman becomes the first Briton in Space ...and the first woman to visit the Mir space station
1999 A new law on parental leave enables both men and women to take up to 13 weeks off to care for children
2010 Equality Act 2010 gives wide-ranging protection against discrimination: The act strengthens and consolidates all previous legislation under one act. Sex Discrimination Act makes it illegal to discriminate against women in work, education and training and enables both men and women to take up to 13 weeks off to care for children under 5
2014 National Women in Engineering Day celebrated for the first time on 23 June -
now International Women in Engineering Day - a UNESCO supported national awareness day
2014 Professor Dame Ann Dowling OM, DBE, FREng, FRS, becomes the first woman President of the Royal Academy of Engineering
2015 Naomi Climer CBE becomes the first female President of the Institution of Engineering and Technology
2016 Isobel Pollock-Hulf OBE becomes the first female Master of the Worshipful Company of Engineers
2018 Faith Wainwright becomes the first female President of the Institution of Structural Engineers
2019 WES Celebrates its Centenary
2019 Professor Serena Best CBE becomes the first female President of the Institution of Materials, Minerals and Mining