Women

Abortion
Abortion is defined as either a spontaneous early ending of a pregnancy (a.k.a. miscarriage) or an induced ear...
Act 346 of 2021
Act 346 of 2021, titled “An Act to Prohibit the Performance of a Pelvic Examination on an Unconscious or Ane...
Dorathy N. McDonald Allen (1910–1990)
Dorathy N. McDonald Allen was the first woman to serve in the Arkansas Senate, serving from 1964 to 1974 in th...
American Association of University Women (AAUW)
With its national headquarters in Washington DC, the American Association of University Women (AAUW) is a nonp...
Katharine Susan Anthony (1877–1965)
Katharine Susan Anthony was suffragist, feminist, pacifist, socialist, and author of feminist and psychologica...
Arkansas Association of Colored Women
aka: Arkansas Association of Colored Women’s and Girls Federated Clubs, Inc.
aka: Arkansas Association of Women’s Clubs, Inc.
aka: Arkansas Association of Women, Youth, and Young Adults Clubs, Inc.
The Arkansas Association of Colored Women (AACW) was organized in 1...
Arkansas Married Woman's Property Law
Under the common law that prevailed in all American jurisdictions except Louisiana, once a woman married, all ...
Arkansas Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA)
aka: Arkansas Equal Suffrage Central Committee (AESCC)
aka: State Woman's Suffragist Association
The post–Civil War era saw the beginnings of major social change ...
Arkansas Women's Hall of Fame
The Arkansas Women’s Hall of Fame supports the accomplishments and achievements of Arkansas women through an...
Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching
In 1930, Texas suffragist and civil rights activist Jessie Daniel Ames and a group of white women in the South...
Birth Control Movement
aka: Family Planning Movement
In Arkansas, early marriage and the need for farm labor had long en...
Hattie Caraway (1878–1950)
Hattie Ophelia Wyatt Caraway was the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate, the first woman to preside over t...
Hilda Cornish (1878–1965)
aka: Brunhilde Kahlert Cornish
Brunhilde Kahlert Cornish was the founder of the Arkansas birth con...
Florence Lee Brown Cotnam (1865–1932)
Florence Lee Brown Cotnam was a leader in the women’s suffrage movement in Arkansas, representing the state ...
Alice Sankey Ellington (1880–1970)
Alice Sankey Ellington was a leader in the women’s suffrage movement in Arkansas, an officer of the Southern...
Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)
The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is a proposed Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would guarantee equal r...
Fayetteville Female Seminary
One of the most influential institutions in early Arkansas was the Fayetteville Female Seminary in Fayettevil...
Eliza A. (Lizzie) Dorman Fyler (1850–1885)
Lizzie Dorman Fyler was an activist in Arkansas in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Although she die...
Jean Gordon (1926–2024)
Jean Thomas Gordon devoted her long life to education, social justice, women’s rights, environmental protect...
Nancy Johnson Hall (1904–1991)
Nancy Pearl Johnson Hall was the first woman to be elected to a constitutional office in Arkansas. A staff mem...
Frances Marion Harrow Hanger (1856–1945)
Frances Marion Harrow Hanger was a clubwoman, civic volunteer, and writer who was central to the cultural and ...
Hopkins v. Jegley
Hopkins v. Jegley is an ongoing legal challenge to four abortion restrictions passed by the Arkansas state leg...
Virginia Lillian Morris Johnson (1928–2007)
Virginia Lillian Morris Johnson was the first woman to run for the office of governor in Arkansas. Running as ...
Julia Hughes Jones (1939–2022)
Julia Hughes Jones was a Pulaski County circuit clerk and state auditor. She was the first woman to be elected...
League of Women Voters of Arkansas
aka: Arkansas League of Women Voters
The League of Women Voters (LWV), a nonpartisan political organizat...
Mary Brown "Brownie" Williams Ledbetter (1932–2010)
Mary Brown “Brownie” Williams Ledbetter was a lifelong political activist who worked in many controversial...
Blanche Meyers Lambert Lincoln (1960–)
Blanche Meyers Lambert Lincoln was a United States senator whose career was marked by firsts and by a desire ...
Little Rock NOW
The Little Rock (Pulaski County) chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW) was organized in 1974 i...
Clara Alma Cox McDiarmid (1847–1899)
Clara Alma Cox McDiarmid was Arkansas’s foremost nineteenth-century women’s reformer. She supported suffra...
María Cristina DeColores Moroles (1953–)
María Cristina DeColores Moroles (also known by the ceremonial names Sun Hawk and Águila) is best known for ...
Carrie Amelia Moore Nation (1846–1911)
aka: Carry Nation
Carry Amelia Moore Nation was a temperance advocate famous for bein...
Pearl Oldfield (1876–1962)
aka: Fannie Pearl Peden Oldfield
In 1929, Fannie Pearl Peden Oldfield became the first woman from Ar...
Panel of American Women
The Little Rock Panel of American Women was organized in 1963 by Sara Alderman Murphy. It was based on the nat...
Political Equality League
The Progressive Era (circa 1890–1920) in Arkansas included efforts by citizens to win voting rights for wome...
Susan Hampton Newton Pryor (1900–1984)
Susan Hampton Newton Pryor was the first woman in Arkansas to run for a political office after women obtained ...
Lessie Stringfellow Read (1891–1971)
Lessie Stringfellow Read was an early champion of women’s rights, a writer for six national periodicals of h...
Elsijane Trimble Roy (1916–2007)
Elsijane Trimble Roy was Arkansas’s first woman circuit judge, the first woman on the Arkansas Supreme Court...
Santuario Arco Iris
aka: Arco Iris Earth Care Project (AIECP)
Santuario Arco Iris, an intentional land community located in Ponca...
Annie Schoppach (1858–1949)
aka: Annie Adelia Anette Ryerse
Annie Schoppach was the first female graduate of the Medical Depart...
Vada Webb Sheid (1916–2008)
Vada Webb Sheid was the first woman to serve in both the Arkansas Senate and the Arkansas House of Representat...
Mary Burnett Talbert (1866–1923)
Mary Burnett Talbert was a leading African American civil rights and anti-lynching activist who also served as...
Adolphine Fletcher Terry (1882–1976)
Adolphine Fletcher Terry was a civic-minded woman from a prominent Little Rock (Pulaski County) family who use...
Louise McPhetridge Thaden (1905–1979)
Louise McPhetridge Thaden was an aviation pioneer and holder of numerous flight records during the late 1920s ...
Julia McAlmont Warner (1860–1927)
Julia McAlmont Warner was an educator at Arkansas Female College in Little Rock (Pulaski County) and a leader ...
Elizabeth McConaughey (Bettie) Wassell (1859–1923)
Elizabeth McConaughey (Bettie) Wassell was the honorary state regent of the Daughters of the American Revoluti...
Gertrude Watkins (1884–1938)
Gertrude Watkins was a prominent suffragist in Arkansas in the early twentieth century. She was a state leader...
Effiegene Locke Wingo (1883–1962)
In 1930, Effiegene Locke Wingo became the second of only four women from Arkansas to be elected to the U.S. Ho...
Woman's Chronicle
On March 3, 1888, in Little Rock (Pulaski County) three women—Catherine Campbell Cuningham, Mary Burt Brooks...
Women
From prehistoric times through the French and Spanish colonial eras, from the territorial period through state...
Women in the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union
The Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union (STFU) was an organization of tenant farmers formed in 1934 in Tyronza (...
Women's Intentional Communities
aka: Women's Land Communities
Women’s intentional communities emerged in the context of the sec...
Women's Library
The Women’s Library was formed in Fayetteville (Washington County) in 1982. Completely volunteer based and o...
Women's Suffrage Movement
After the Civil War, Arkansas leaders began advocating women’s right to vote. Women’s suffrage clubs start...
Yellowhammer
Yellowhammer was a women’s communal-living farm in Madison County in the 1970s, representative of women’s ...