• 60 prompts
  • Checked October 2026

Women's History Month Writing Prompts

Dated firsts, the long road to the vote, work nobody counted, and a woman in your own family.

Women's History Month Writing Prompts

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  1. A pack horse librarian's mule is too old to ride, so she walks beside it; write their talk on the hill.Fact: one librarian with a very old mule walked part of her route beside the animal.
  2. Write the story of how a woman in your family came to live where she lives.Angle: every family has a move in it. Find out who decided and who objected.
  3. Write a letter to a woman in your family you never met, about the one photograph of her you have seen.Angle: describe the photograph to her, then ask what happened just after it.

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All 60 prompts

A first 15

  • A Kansas town elected the first woman mayor in the United States in 1887, and she did not know she was on the ballot; write her election morning. Fact: in Argonia, Kansas, candidates did not have to be made public before election day.
  • A woman in Iowa passed the bar exam in 1869 although the law said only men could take it; write the letter that tells her she is a lawyer. Fact: she became the first female lawyer in the United States in 1869, admitted to the Iowa bar.
  • A woman invented the machine that makes paper bags with flat bottoms; write the grocery bag's thank-you to her. Fact: earlier machine-made bags were shaped like envelopes and could not stand on their bases.
  • A woman patented the first working windshield wiper in 1903, and the story goes that a snowy streetcar ride gave her the idea; write the ride. Fact: her lever moved a rubber blade across the glass from inside the vehicle.
  • After her good dishes were chipped in the sink, a woman patented a dishwashing machine in 1886; write the dinner party that started it. Fact: she built wire compartments shaped to hold plates, cups or saucers.
  • Be the reporter sent to cover a first from women's history, and write the five questions you would ask that evening. Angle: skip How does it feel. Ask what she ate, who she told first and what comes next.
  • The first American woman flew in space in 1983; write the questions a class of children would have sent up to her. Fact: she flew on the space shuttle in June 1983, the third woman to fly in space.
  • The first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States, in 1849, got into the school by a vote of its students; write her first lecture. Fact: every school she applied to rejected her but one, whose students voted yes as a joke.
  • The first woman to swim the English Channel did it in 1926, faster than any man had; write the last mile. Fact: on August 6, 1926, she beat the record, set by a man in 1923, by well over an hour.
  • The first woman to win a Nobel Prize won it in 1903; write the day the news reaches her laboratory. Fact: she shared the 1903 prize in physics and won a second prize, in chemistry, in 1911.
  • For Women's History Month, write about a woman you know of who was the first to do something, and what she had to hear before she did it. Angle: collect the reasons people gave her for not trying. Then show the day.
  • In 1932 a pilot became the first woman to fly alone across the Atlantic without stopping; write the hour she could see nothing but water. Fact: the nonstop solo flight of 1932 earned her the Distinguished Flying Cross.
  • In 1981 the first woman took her seat on the Supreme Court of the United States; write the note she might have left for the second. Fact: she served as an associate justice from 1981 to 2006.
  • Montana sent the first woman to Congress in 1916, four years before the 19th Amendment; write her first day at work. Fact: elected to the House of Representatives in 1916, she was the first woman in federal office.
  • Wyoming swore in the first woman to be governor of a state in 1925; write the speech a girl in the crowd goes home and gives to her dolls. Fact: she served as governor of Wyoming from 1925 to 1927.

The vote 15

  • The 19th Amendment did not open the polls to every woman at once; write about a woman still waiting to vote in the years after 1920. Fact: many women could not vote long into the 20th century because of state voting laws.
  • The 19th Amendment was certified on August 26, 1920; write the telegram a daughter sends her mother that day. Fact: the Secretary of State certified the ratification on August 26, 1920.
  • The amendment for women's votes first reached Congress in 1878 and passed in 1919; write a letter from a woman who worked for it all that time. Fact: it was passed by Congress on June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920.
  • At Seneca Falls a hundred people signed a declaration of women's rights and two hundred did not; write the thoughts of someone holding the pen. Fact: of about 300 people there, exactly 100 signed the Declaration of Sentiments.
  • For Women's History Month, write about the first time a woman in your family voted, as she tells it or as you imagine it. Angle: where the polling place was, who went with her, what she wore.
  • In August 1920 a young Tennessee lawmaker voted yes to women's suffrage after a note from his mother; write a note that could change a vote. Fact: the vote was in August 1920, and Tennessee was the 36th state to ratify.
  • In July 1848 about 300 people met in a chapel in Seneca Falls, New York, to talk about women's rights; write it as someone who came unsure. Fact: the convention ran for two days, July 19 and 20, 1848, in the Wesleyan Chapel.
  • The lawmakers of Wyoming Territory, all of them men, voted in 1869 to let women vote; write the dinner-table talk in one house that night. Fact: the law gave the women of Wyoming Territory the right to vote and to hold office.
  • Nine western states let women vote before the rest of the country did; write a letter from a voter out west to her sister back east. Fact: nine western states had adopted woman suffrage laws by 1912.
  • On March 3, 1913, thousands of women marched for the vote down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington; write the parade as a girl riding on a float. Fact: the procession had floats, bands and between 5,000 and 10,000 marchers.
  • Women stood silently at the White House gates in 1917 holding banners for the vote, day after day; write one cold morning on the line. Fact: the Silent Sentinels began on January 10, 1917, the White House's first pickets.
  • Write a class election in which only the boys are allowed to vote, and what the girls do about it. Angle: keep it fair to everyone in the room. The interesting part is the first meeting.
  • Write the first Election Day after the 19th Amendment as a grandmother, a mother and a daughter walking to the polls together. Fact: the amendment says the right to vote shall not be denied on account of sex.
  • Write the words for a banner about women's right to vote, short enough to read from a passing streetcar. Angle: a question works better than a statement. Try three and keep one.
  • Wyoming Territory soon swore in the country's first women jurors; write one juror's first day in the jury box. Fact: within a few months of the 1869 law the territory had the country's first female jurors.

Work nobody counted 15

  • A pack horse librarian's mule is too old to ride, so she walks beside it; write their talk on the hill. Fact: one librarian with a very old mule walked part of her route beside the animal.
  • American women ran army switchboards in France in the First World War, in two languages; write one shift at the board. Fact: over 7,000 women applied and 450 were accepted. Early ones had to speak French.
  • The army's women telephone operators were not counted as veterans until 1977; write the letter one of them opens that year. Fact: until 1977 they were officially classed as civilian contract employees of the Army.
  • Before machines, a computer was a person, and often a woman; write the job advertisement. Fact: computer meant one who computes. Teams did long calculations by hand and checked each other.
  • The book women's readers made scrapbooks of recipes and quilt patterns to pass along; write a page for a scrapbook your street could share. Fact: patrons wrote favorite recipes and quilting patterns into binders shared around the area.
  • During World War II millions of women took jobs in factories and shipyards; write a woman's first day on the line by its sounds. Fact: during World War II almost 19 million women had jobs.
  • For Women's History Month, list the work done in your home in one day that nobody is paid for, then write about the job you would miss first. Angle: count the jobs done before breakfast separately. They are the easiest to forget.
  • In the 1880s women at an observatory were hired as computers to study the stars on photographic plates; write one evening's work. Fact: the Harvard Computers sorted the stars into categories from photographic plates.
  • In the 1930s women librarians in the Kentucky mountains delivered books on horseback; write one rider's route on a wet morning. Fact: the Pack Horse Library Project ran from 1935 to 1943. A route covered 100 to 120 miles a week.
  • In World War II women pilots tested and delivered military planes; write one pilot's log for a single delivery. Fact: the Women Airforce Service Pilots tested and ferried aircraft and flew over 60 million miles.
  • Pick a woman whose work stood behind a famous event and write the day from her side of the room. Angle: she is not in the newspaper photograph. Say what she did before it was taken.
  • Six women programmed one of the first electronic computers by moving cables and switches; write the day the program finally ran. Fact: at least 200 women worked as computers on the project; six became ENIAC's programmers.
  • The women who mapped the sky at Harvard were paid by the hour; write a letter home from a new computer who has just spotted something new. Fact: their usual pay was 25 to 50 cents an hour.
  • Write a pay slip for a woman's job that has never had one: a week of looking after a family. Angle: list the tasks and the hours. Leave the total blank and say why.
  • The young women of the Lowell mills wrote and printed their own magazine after long shifts; write an entry for it. Fact: the mill girls worked 12 to 14 hours a day and put out journals like the Lowell Offering.

A woman in my family 15

  • Choose a woman in your family and write the history book paragraph she deserves. Angle: dates, places and one achievement nobody outside the family knows.
  • Describe a woman in your family by her voice: what she says when she is pleased, cross or in a hurry. Angle: three sayings, word for word. Put the one you hear most last.
  • For Women's History Month, write what you hope a child in your family will one day say about you. Angle: pick one sentence you would like to be true, then say what you must do first.
  • If a woman in your family had a statue, write where it would stand and what it would show her doing. Angle: not posing. Show her in the middle of something she does every week.
  • Interview the oldest woman in your family, or one you know well, about the first job she ever had, and write what she said. Angle: ask what she was paid, what she wore and what she bought first.
  • Set one woman's life in your family beside the world's: write five of her years with a headline for each. Angle: the year she was born, started work, moved. She may remember the headline differently.
  • Tell a story that a woman in your family always tells, the way she tells it. Angle: keep her opening words and her ending. Those are the parts she never changes.
  • Thank a woman in your family in writing for something she probably does not remember doing. Angle: give the day, the place and what it changed for you.
  • What was school like for your grandmother or another older woman you know? Write her school day next to your own. Angle: the walk there, the desk, the rules, the lunch. Change one thing at a time.
  • Write a letter to a woman in your family you never met, about the one photograph of her you have seen. Angle: describe the photograph to her, then ask what happened just after it.
  • Write about a skill a woman in your family has that will be lost unless someone learns it. Angle: say who should learn it, and what the first lesson would be.
  • Write about a time a woman in your family was told she could not do something, and what happened next. Angle: ask her for the exact words. The ending may still be going on.
  • Write about a woman in your family through one object that belonged to her. Angle: a ring, a recipe card, a tool, a coat. Say who has it now.
  • Write about something a woman in your family taught you without meaning to. Angle: you picked it up by watching. Set down what her hands were busy with.
  • Write the story of how a woman in your family came to live where she lives. Angle: every family has a move in it. Find out who decided and who objected.

How it works

These Women's History Month writing prompts run from the public record to the kitchen table. Some start from a date, such as August 18, 1920; others send the writer to ask a woman they know one question.

Read the full guide

The vote, from 1848 to 1920

Fifteen prompts follow one long campaign. About 300 people met at Seneca Falls, New York, in July 1848. Wyoming Territory gave women the vote in 1869. The amendment first reached Congress in 1878, passed on June 4, 1919, and was ratified the next summer.

A woman in my family

These need no library. An object that belonged to her, a story she always tells, the first job she had: the writer asks, listens and writes down what was said.

  • Before an interview, write three questions. During it, ask the fourth one that her answers suggest.
  • A prompt about a first reads best from the side: the crowd, the doorway, the person who came second.

Questions and answers

What are good Women's History Month writing prompts?

Ones with a scene in them. Write the election morning of a mayor who did not know she was on the ballot, a wet morning on a pack horse librarian's route, or a note that could change a lawmaker's vote.

When is Women's History Month?

March in the United States. It began as a week in Sonoma County, California, in 1978, became a national week in 1980 and a month in 1987. International Women's Day is March 8.

When did women get the right to vote in the United States?

In 1920. The 19th Amendment says the right to vote shall not be denied on account of sex. The National Archives notes that state voting laws still kept many women from the polls long afterward.

Can I write about a woman in my own family for Women's History Month?

Yes. Choose the history book paragraph she deserves, the statue she should have, or the skill of hers that will be lost unless someone learns it.

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