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1987

America

..... Rita Dove was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry for Thomas and Beulah

..... Cher was named Best Actress for her role in Moonstruck and Olympia Dukakis was named Best Supporting Actress for her role in the same film

United Kingdom

..... Penelope Lively received the Booker Prize for Moon Tiger

..... Martina Navratilova was once again Wimbledon Ladies Champion

..... David Alton MP introduced a private member's bill to reduce the abortion time limit to eighteen weeks

..... Wendy Henry became the first editor of a national Fleet Street paper when appointed by the News of The World. A Year later her successor was also a woman

..... Helen Chadwick was the first woman to be short listed for the Turner Prize

..... fifteen women in Canterbury were the first to be given the title of Reverend and allowed to wear clerical collars

..... in December, Marks and Spencer and National Westminster Bank both appointed a woman onto their boards of directors for the first time. The woman, Baroness Janet Young, was also a first in other areas

..... Margaret Thatcher was voted the most admired woman in the world

..... in January, the Labour Party announced its plans for a Ministry of Women, with its own Minister. This appointment would follow the examples of many other EC and non-EC countries. The Minister would be responsible for the fairer representation of women, the co-ordination of child care policies and women's safety

..... Polareyes, a pioneering photographic journal for, about, and by black women photographers, was begun

Around The World

..... Australia ..... Mary Gaudron became the first woman judge in the High Court of Australia ..... and ..... four women became the first to be trained as pilots with the Australian Air Force.  Flying had been opened up in the RAAF and two women were already in the force. Two recruited from outside had passed the first stage of training at Point Cook, near Melbourne. They followed the same course as men, including air traffic control and navigation, aerodynamics, aircraft systems and meteorology and would be flying non-operational aircraft after a further advanced course

..... Norway ..... paid maternity leave was extended from 18 to 20 weeks and all ministries prepared their own Action Plan to Promote Equal Status

Dated items

April 16th ..... UNITED KINGDOM ..... under the 1986 Social Security Act the Maternity Grant of £25 was abolished

May 27th ..... UNITED KINGDOM ..... MP Jo Richardson urged women to stay in bed for the day so that the impact of their absence was fully realised. The suggestion was part of a European election campaign to highlight the disparity between available provisions for British women against their European counterparts. In the UK, six weeks maternity leave was available, compared to 32 weeks in West Germany and 21 weeks in Italy

June 11th ..... UNITED KINGDOM ..... Margaret Thatcher became the first British prime minister in 160 years to be elected for a third term