Their footsteps echo in the corridors of history, but we rarely hear them. As a young woman living in the 21st century, I don’t often think about the sacrifices of those who came before me.

I take it for granted that I can vote, achieve my goals, survive on my own income, choose whether or not to start a family. I can dress how I please, I can voice my opinion, I can file for divorce. And on the isolated occasion that I do feel discriminated against because of my gender, I brush it off because it has no relevance. There will always be ignorant people in this world. It is my choice to internalize it or move on to something else.

But when I pause to really consider history, I feel an earnest and intense kinship with the women who pioneered my rights decades ago. They took the real risks. They were strong in the face of challenging deep social traditions. And the shocking part – and this is true for Civil Rights as well – is that it wasn’t very long ago that our cultural fabric was based on severe restrictions to human rights.

As we salute our modern business women in this special section, we also pay tribute to those who laid the way for our success. What follows is a timeline of notable events in the history of women, courtesy of Encyclopedia Brittanica.

1800

The U.S. logs the highest birth rate worldwide, 7.04 children per woman.

1833

Oberlin Collegiate Institute (later Oberlin College) is founded in Ohio as the first American college to admit men and women on an equal basis.

1893

Largely through the efforts of suffragist Kate Sheppard, New Zealand becomes the first country to grant women the right to vote.

1900

British tennis player Charlotte Cooper wins the first women’s gold medal at the Olympics.

1904

In French law, women are no longer permanent minors.

1908

A group of women storm the British Parliament demanding suffrage. Twenty-four of them are arrested.

1909

In New York, shirtwaist factory workers go on strike. The International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union and the Women’s Trade Union League work together in support of the strike.

1911

Marie Curie is awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry for the isolation of pure radium.

1912

Juliette Gordon Low founds the Girl Guides (later Girl Scouts) in the United States. By 1927 there will be a troop in every state.

1913

Norwegian women win the right to vote. In 1915, Danish women win the right to vote.

1914

In Russia, Princess Eugenie Shakhovskaya is the first female military pilot. She flies reconnaissance missions.

1917

The United States Navy hires 12,000 women as clerks in the same job classifications and for the same pay as men.

This is so that it can send men overseas.

1918

Canadian and British women are granted the right to vote, although in Great Britain a woman must be over age 30.

The U.S. government reports that 1.4 million women work in war industries. After World War I these women are forced out of industrial work.

1920

The Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is signed into law, giving women the right to vote.

Despite death threats from the Ku Klux Klan, Mary McLeod Bethune begins a voter registration drive for African American women.

The University of Oxford admits its first full-degree female students.

1945

More than six million American women who entered the workforce during World War II are pushed out of their traditionally male jobs at the war’s end.

1975

The U.S. Supreme Court rules that women cannot be excluded from juries because of their sex.

1986

The U.S. Supreme Court upholds affirmative action on the basis of race or gender.

2002

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II celebrates her Golden Jubilee, marking 50 years on the throne.