This is a timeline of women's sports, spanning from ancient history up to the 21st century. It includes both competitive sports and notable physical feats.
Early history 2134–2000 BCE – Illustrations on Egyptian temple walls from the Eleventh Dynasty showed women exercising and playing ball games.
6th century BCE – The Heraean Games were the first recorded women's athletic competition, held in the stadium at Olympia.
396 BCE – Cynisca became the first woman to win at the Olympic Games; she employed male charioteers to drive the horses she trained and entered her team at the Olympics, where it won in the four-horse chariot race (tethrippon Greek: τέθριππον).Welwei, Karl-Wilhelm (Bochum), "Cynisca", in: Brill's New Pauly, Antiquity volumes edited by: Hubert Cancik and, Helmuth Schneider, English Edition by: Christine F. Salazar, Classical Tradition volumes edited by: Manfred Landfester, English Edition by: Francis G. Gentry.Millender, Ellen G., "Spartan Women" p. 500-525. In A Companion to Sparta,edited by Anton Powell, Vol. 1 of A Companion to Sparta. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2018.
368 BCE – Spartan charioteer Euryleonis won the two-horse chariot races in that year's Olympic games. A bronze statue was erected in Sparta in her honour.
2nd century CE – Contemporary writers and historians described female gladiators fighting in Rome.
25–220 – Han Dynasty-era frescoes depict women playing the ancient game of Tsu Chu. There are a number of opinions about the dates of the frescoes with the earliest estimates around 5000 BCE.
1296 – At a Christmas feast for Edward I of England, an acrobat named either Maud or Matilda Makejoy performed acrobatic feats as part of the entertainment.
Pre-Columbian era – In the Americas, women from many indigenous tribes participated in sports such as foot races, swimming, stick and ball games, and wrestling contests. Starting in the 16th century, however, European settlers and colonial influence gradually began limiting athletic opportunities for indigenous women, particularly as Europeans tried to forcibly assimilate indigenous people into Western culture.
1493 – When Italian noblewoman Beatrice d'Este visited Venice, a regatta was held in which fifty peasant women competed.
1567 – Mary, Queen of Scots became the first recorded woman to play golf in Scotland at Musselburgh Links.
18th century 1722 – English champion boxer Elizabeth Wilkinson won her first public bout, after challenging a local woman to a fight.
1745 – The first recorded women's cricket match took place in Surrey, England. By the second half of the eighteenth century, women's cricket matches played between local teams became common in the South East of England.
1768 – A French woman named Madame Bunel played a highly publicized tennis match against the English Mr. Tomkins. After three sets, she defeated him 2–1, subsequently winning again in a rematch 11 days later.
1780 – At the American horse racing track of Hempstead Plains, Long Island, a three-day equestrian event included a competition for women riders.
1781 – As archery became a popular sport for the aristocracy in England, upper-class women and men competed in archery contests and created archery societies such as the Toxophilite Society.
1784 – Élisabeth Thible of France was the first woman to fly in a hot-air balloon.
1790s – An annual women's association football competition was held in Mid-Lothian, Scotland.
19th century 1811 – The first women's golf tournament is held at the Royal Musselburgh Golf Club, Scotland.
1816 – French tightrope walker Madame Saqui performed in England to celebrate the opening of Vauxhall Bridge. After ascending a 300-ft inclined rope to the top of a tower, she completed one of her signature tricks, running back down along the rope while fireworks exploded in the background.
1819 – In a New York City exhibition, a Mrs. Adolphe became the first woman to publicly walk on a tightrope.
1825 – Madame Johnson ascended from New York in a hot air balloon in New York, later landing in a swamp in the neighboring state of New Jersey.
1842 – English rower Ann Glanville achieved national celebrity becoming known as the champion female rower of the world; her all-women crew often winning against the best male teams.
1856 – The Swedish swimmer and bath house director Nancy Edberg arranged her first public Swimming exhibitions with female swimmers.
1858 – On August 5, the American Julia Archibald Holmes became the first woman to climb to the summit of Pike's Peak in Colorado.
1863 – Association football governing bodies introduced standardized rules to prohibit violence on the pitch, making it more socially acceptable for women to play.
1864 – A group of 25 founding members form the Park Place Croquet Club of Brooklyn. Croquet is believed to be the first game played by both sexes in the United States.
1866 – Two baseball teams with female players were formed at Vassar College in New York.
1867 – The first ladies golf club was formed at St. Andrew's in Scotland. It gained 500 members by 1886.
1867 – The Dolly Vardens from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, an all African-American baseball team, became the first women's professional sports team.
1870 – An image of a women's double scull race made the cover of Harper's Weekly in 1870.
1874 – Tennis was introduced to the United States by Mary Ewing Outerbridge of Staten Island. She brought the needed equipment to the United States from Bermuda and set up the first American court at Staten Island Cricket and Baseball Club.
1875 – The first game of baseball played by women in front of a paying audience took place in Springfield, Illinois on September 11.
1875 – Wellesley College, an all women institution, opened a gymnasium for students to exercise and sponsored the first women's rowing program in the U.S. They also opened up a lake for ice skating.
1876 – In the first women's boxing match held in the United States, Nell Saunders defeated Rose Harland. Her prize was a silver butter dish.
1882 – The YWCA of Boston sponsored the first ever athletic games for women.
1884 – Maud Watson, of England, won the first Ladies' Singles title at Wimbledon.
1887 – Ellen Hansell, an American, became the first women's singles tennis champion. She won the title at the U.S. Open.
1888 – Cyclists competed in the world's first women's bicycle race in New South Wales, Australia. The competitors raced on a course that was two miles (3.2 kilometers) long.
1889 – Bertha Townsend and Margarette Ballard, both of the United States, won the first women's doubles at the U.S. Open.
1890s – Cricket was taught as a sport in several girls' public schools in England including the Roedean School, Wycombe Abbey, the Royal School, and Clifton Ladies.
1890 – Nellie Bly, a reporter for the New York World newspaper, became the first woman to travel around the world alone. She completed the journey on January 25 after 72 days of travel.
1892 – The first women's football match recorded by the Scottish Football Association took place in Glasgow, Scotland.
1892 – Four young women started what became ZLAC Rowing Club in San Diego, California, which is thought today to be the world's oldest continuously existing all-women's rowing club.
1892 - First inter-institutional women's basketball game, between the University of California, Berkeley and Miss Head's School.
1893 – Newnham College Boat Club was formed in Cambridge, England.
1893 – The Ladies' Golf Union, the governing body for women's and girls' amateur golf in Great Britain and Ireland, was founded in St Andrews, Scotland and the first British Ladies Amateur Golf Championship was won by Lady Margaret Scott at Royal Lytham & St Annes Golf Club.
1894 – The most well-documented early European association football women's team was founded by activist Nettie Honeyball in England and named the British Ladies' Football Club.
1894 – The first golf tournament for women in the United States was won by Hollard A. Ford. Held on a 7-hole course in Morristown, New Jersey, Ford easily won with a score of 97 on the double-7. She was 14 strokes under the 2nd place golfer.
1894 - Dribbling and guarding another player was prohibited in women's basketball.
1895 – In England, the first recorded game of association football between women took place.
1895 – The women's University Match in (field) hockey between the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge was first played in 1895, making it the oldest women's varsity match in the world.
1895 – The American Annie Smith Peck climbed the Matterhorn, becoming the first woman to reach the summit.
1895 – At the Meadow Brook Club in Hempstead, New York, 13 women competed in the first women's amateur golf championship in the United States. Mrs. Charles S. Brown won the tournament with a score of 132 and Nellie Sargent came in second place.
1895 – A group of "nimble, supple and vivacious girls" competed in what is considered the first organized athletics meeting for women in the United States. Hosted by Vassar College and known as a "Field Day," there were running and jumping events.
1895 – Chicago's West Division High School formed the first women's softball team, but they went without a coach for four years until 1899.
1895 - Clara Gregory Baer wrote the first book of rules for women's basketball.
1895 - The first public women's basketball game in the South was played at a men's only club, the Southern Athletic Club.
1896 – A six-day bicycle race for women, the first of its kind, began at New York City's Madison Square Garden on January 6.
1896 – Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley faced off on April 4 in the first women's intercollegiate basketball championship before a crowd of 700 women. Stanford won, 2–1.
1896 – Stamata Revithi, of Greece, ran the 40-kilometer marathon during the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece.
1897 – Adine Masson, of France, became the first winner of the ladies singles at the French Open.
1897 - The first recorded women's basketball game in Australia was held, played in Victoria, using wet paper bags for baskets.
1897 - The first women's high school basketball game was held, between Austin High and Oak Park. It was won by Austin 16–4.
1898 - On July 5, 1898, Lizzie Arlington became the first woman to play for a professional men's baseball team when she pitched the ninth inning for the Reading Coal Heavers against the Allentown Peanuts.
1899 - Senda Berenson published the first issue of Basketball Guide for Women, which she would edit and update for eighteen years. These rules, with minor modifications, would remain in use until the 1960s.
20th century
1900s Early 1900s - In the early 1900s Edith Garrud became the first British female teacher of jujutsu, and one of the first female martial arts instructors in the Western world.
1900 – The 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris introduces women's events, offering golf, tennis, and croquet. Hélène de Pourtalès of Switzerland was the first woman to win a gold medal as part of a mixed sailing crew. Charlotte Cooper of Great Britain becomes the first individual female winner in an Olympic event. American Margaret Abbott won a gold medal in golf.
1901 – The game of field hockey was introduced to the United States by Constance M.K. at Harvard University.
1904 – The first public match of the women's sport camogie was played in Meath, Ireland. Camogie was developed as a women's variation of the men's sport hurling, with similar rules and equipment.
1904 - Women's boxing first appeared in the Olympic Games as a demonstration sport in 1904, in St. Louis.
1905 – The Camogie Association is founded in Dublin, Ireland to organise and promote the women's sport of camogie in Ireland and across the world.
1905 – Women from Britain and America first play an international golf match, with the British winning 6 matches to 1.