1980 | The 300 Group is founded by Lesley Abdela to push for equal representation of women in the House of Commons. |
|
1980 | Racing driver Desire Wilson is the first woman to win a Formula One race. |
|
1980 | In June, Vigdis Finnbogadottir is the first woman to be democratically elected as head-of-state when she becomes President of Iceland. |
|
1981 | Shirley Williams is one of four rebel MPs, known as 'The Gang of Four', who announce their intention of leaving the Labour Party to set up a new party, the SDP. |
|
1981 | Baroness Young becomes the first woman leader of the House of Lords. |
|
1982 | On 14 November more than 20,000 women surround the Greenham Common American airbase in the UK in a protest known as 'embrace the base'. They are protesting against the installation of US cruise missiles. The Women's Peace Camp on the site ran for nineteen years from 1981-2000. |
|
1982 | Margaret Pereira is appointed the first woman controller of the Home Office Forensic Science Service. |
|
1982 | The Committee of Enquiry into Human Fertilization is established under the chairmanship of Mary Warnock (born 1924). |
|
1982 | Caryl Churchill's feminist play Top Girls is first performed at the Royal Court Theatre in London. |
|
1983 | American zoologist Diane Fossey (1932-1985) publishes Gorillas in the Mist about her work in Rwanda. |
|
1983 | |
|
1983 | Corpus Christi College, Cambridge admits women for the first time in its 630 year history. |
|
1983 | Dr Sally Ride becomes the first American woman astronaut in space on board the space shuttle Challenger. |
|
1983 | The Women's Rugby Football Union is set up. |
|
1983 | Lady Mary Donaldson becomes the first woman Lord Mayor of London. |
|
1983 | Alison Halford becomes the police force's highest ranking female officer when she is appointed Assistant Chief Constable for Merseyside. |
|
1984 | Liechtenstein give votes to women, the last country in Europe to do so. |
|
1984 | The Equal Pay Act (Equal Value Amendment) introduces equal pay for work of equal value. |
|
1984 | Brenda Dean becomes General Secretary of SOGAT (Society of Graphical and Allied Trades), the first woman to head a major union. |
|
1984 | The designer Katherine Hamnett makes headlines when she arrives to meet Margaret Thatcher wearing an anti-nuclear T-shirt. |
|
1985 | At the age of seventeen, Alison Fisher is the first woman World Snooker Champion. |
|
1985 | Julie Tullis becomes the first woman to be selected for an Everest expedition, but dies on K2 in 1986. |
|
1985 | Kim Cotton became Britain 's first surrogate mother. |
|
1986 | |
|
1986 | Theatre director Yvonne Brewster sets up Talawa Theatre Company, Britain's first black theatre company. |
|
1987 | Diane Abbot is Britain's first black woman MP. |
|
1987 | Artist Helen Chadwick is the first woman to be short listed for the Turner Prize. |
|
1988 | Julie Hayward, a canteen cook at a shipyard in Liverpool, is the first woman to win a case under the amended Equal Pay Act. |
|
1988 | Benazir Bhutto (born 1953) becomes the first woman Prime Minister of Pakistan. |
|
1988 | Elizabeth Butler-Sloss becomes the first woman Law Lord when she is appointed an Appeal Court Judge. |
|
1988 | Sian Edwards is appointed the first woman conductor at Covent Garden. |
|
