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1988

America

..... Jesse Jackson ran for the Democratic nomination for president

..... Toni Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her novel Beloved, the first black woman to receive this award

..... Jodie Foster was named Best Actress for The Accused and Geena Davis was named Best Supporting Actress for The Accidental Tourist

United Kingdom

..... Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss became the first woman Lord Justice of Appeal

..... Steffi Graf became Wimbledon Ladies Champion

..... after 180 years there were changes in the tax laws relating to women when it was announced that husbands and wives will be taxed independently

..... in June, a women's golf competition, the Curtis Cup, was held for the first time at Royal St George's, Sandringham, which did not normally admit women golfers to membership

.....the General Synod drew up draft legislation enabling women to be ordained to the priesthood, although not to the episcopacy. Bishops could refuse to ordain women and parishes could refuse to have a woman incumbent. Those men who left the Church because of their opposition to the ordination of women, would be provided for financially

..... the first Women's Regatta was held at Henley  ( from Joanne Murphy, Middlesex, P/L)

..... Women in Property, a contacts group of leading female property professionals, was set up and by 1992 had 370 members across the country. Its chairman was Gill Robinson and Jean Godbert was a committee member

..... according to a report published by the European Commission, the number of women in upper grades of public service continued to be low despite government programs to promote women's careers in public service. However the year saw the appointment of more women to high posts in new European governments. Prime Minister Rocard of France appointed six women to ministerial and deputy posts. In Italy two women ministers were appointed as were four other women to high-level posts and four women were also appointed to high-level positions in Belgium

..... one of the last bastions of gentlemen's attire for women fell at last at Winchmore Hill Women's Hockey Club when they decided to do away with the tie which had been part of the player's uniform since the club was founded in 1909

..... women in the Royal Naval Reserve were to be allowed to serve at sea for the first time in a major Nato exercise to be held. Although women naval reservists and regular Wrens had visited Royal Navy ships in the past during the day, rules prevented them from staying overnight.  In Exercise Teamwork, 24 women WRNR communications specialists were based on six ships leased from the merchant fleet and their involvement was the first test of new orders drawn up last year by the Naval Home Command and prompted by the need to reassign 400 Wren reservists previously designated to work in headquarters as radio equipment operators. The change meant that Wren reservists are now able to serve at sea but regular Wrens were still restricted to shore duties

..... the oldest bastion of education male chauvinism when the King's School, Canterbury, finally admitted girls from the age of 13 years and would soon go fully co-educational. The school was founded in 597 AD and in its 1400 years the only females admitted have been boarding house matrons.  There were already 100 girls in the sixth form, but the co-educational experiment was extended throughout the school to give full equality to the sexes. Girls were able to enter the lower school (Milner Court) at the age of eight and the upper school at 13

..... Valda James, the first black woman mayor was appointed in Islington

..... Dartmoor top security men's prison became the first prison to appoint women as prison officers

..... Kim George refereed the FA Cup Tie

..... Annie Bassett became the first woman general manager of a league team when appointed by Reading AFC

..... the calculation of pensions, based on the highest earnings of the best twenty years, was scrapped and would now be based on lifetime earnings, making women vulnerable to poverty in old age

..... Julie Hayward  a canteen cook at a shipyard in Liverpool, became the first woman to win a case of equal pay for equal value, following the 1984 Equal Pay Act amendment

.... in June, after four years, Irene Pickstone and other mail order checkers won the right to bring a claim for equal pay with men unloading goods from vans

..... Sian Edwards became the first woman to conduct classical music at Covent Garden

..... past and present members of the Women's Royal Naval Service paraded to salute a former Wren as her 1939-45 War letters to her sweetheart overseas became part of Britain's war history. The letters belonged to Wren Maureen Wells neé Bolster and she flew from her home in Melbourne, Australia, accompanied by her husband Eric,  to receive the tribute aboard the cruiser Belfast. "Entertaining Eric : Letters from the Home Front 1941-44" was published by the Imperial War Museum and was the ninth in a series of personal war memoirs

Around The World

..... Germany ..... Kristin Otto won six gold medals in the Olympic Games

..... New Zealand ..... a bill allowing women to become bishops in the Anglican Church was passed by the Church's Synod

..... Norway ..... paid maternity leave was extended form 20 to 22 weeks and the Equal Status Act 21 strengthened and stipulated that there must be 40% representation of each sex on all public committees

..... Spain ..... the first female entrants into the Spanish military academies began their studies in September. The incorporation of women into the Army and the Civil Guard was based on constitutional principles of equality and women would have the same training as the men including weaponry and military strategy ..... and ..... the Ministry of Education distributed to schools and publishers a manual of non-sexist use of language. The manual directed that women were to be presented with equal dignity as men and that the possibilities of choice for women's lives should be depicted. It also noted the predominance of the masculine form in the Spanish language and suggested non-sexist alternatives such as " human rights" instead of "rights of man" and "Spanish people" instead of the masculine form "Spaniard"

..... Gertrude Elion ( with George Hitchings and James Black) won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or medicine

..... Benazir Bhutto became Prime Minister of Pakistan, the first woman leader of a modern Muslim nation

Dated items

February 2nd ..... UNITED KINGDOM ..... many eyebrows were raised when three lesbians abseiled from the public gallery in the House of Lords following the vote in favour of Clause 28 of the Local Government Bill . The new act restricted the promotion of homosexuals by local authorities

July 21st ..... UNITED KINGDOM ..... the first woman in the world to give birth after a liver transplant was a 32-year old British woman from Essex. she had been infertile for twelve years and gave birth to a twins on and daughter at King's college Hospital, London

September 6th ..... AUSTRALIA ..... the government appointed two women to lead the Mawson and Macquarie Island Antarctic stations and they were the first women from any country to take charge of permanent bases in the region

October 11th ..... UNITED KINGDOM ..... girls began to study at Magdalene College, Cambridge, for the first time and to mark the event male students wore black armbands and the porter flew a black flag