Achievement |
Person |
First Indian woman pilot |
Harita Kaur Deol becomes the first Indian woman pilot in the Indian Air Force (IAF), on a solo flight in 1994. |
First Indian woman to be the member of Legion of Honour |
Asha Pande |
First Indian woman to reach the final of an Olympic event |
Pilavullakandi Thekkeparambil Usha, popularly known as P. T. Usha |
First Indian woman to sit in civil services exam, to join IFS, to be a diplomat, to become the ambassador/High commissioner |
Muthamma Chonira. |
First Indian Women to win Magasasay Award |
Kamladevi Chattopadhyay |
First woman Air Vice Marshal |
P. Bandopadhyay |
First woman Airline Pilot |
Durga Banerjee |
First woman Asian Games gold medal winner |
Kamlijit Sandhu |
First woman Central Minister (in pre-independent India) |
Vijayalakshmi Pandit, minister of local self-government and public health, 1937 |
First woman Chess Grandmaster |
Koneru Humpy, 2002. She was also the youngest woman in the world to become a grandmaster at 15 years old. |
First woman Chief Justice of a High Court (Himachal Pradesh) |
Leila Seth, 1991 |
First woman Chief Minister of a State |
Sucheta Kripalani, Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, 1963–1967 |
First woman Director General of Police |
Kanchan Chaudhary Bhattacharya |
First woman Doctorate of Science |
Asima Chatterjee (1944) |
First woman Governor |
Sarojini Naidu, Governor of Uttar Pradesh, 1947–1949 |
First woman Graduates |
Kadambini Ganguly and Chandramukhi Basu, 1883 |
First woman Head of an Undergraduate Academic Institution |
Chandramukhi Basu, 1888 |
First woman High Court Judge |
Anna Chandy |
First woman Honours Graduate |
Kamini Roy, 1886 |
First woman IAS officer |
Isha Basant Joshi(b1908) |
First woman IPS Officer |
Kiran Bedi |
First woman Lawyer |
Cornelia Sorabjee (1892) also the first female graduate from Bombay University, and the first woman in the world to read law at Oxford. |
First woman Minister in a government |
Rajkumari Amrit Kaur in the Ministry of Health |
First woman Monarch of Delhi Sultanate |
Razia Sultan (1205–1240) of Mamluk Sultanate (Delhi) |
First woman Photojournalist |
Homai Vyarawalla (1913) |
First woman Physician |
Kadambini Ganguly, 1886 |
First woman President |
Pratibha Patil, 2007 |
First Woman President of the United Nations General Assembly |
Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, 1953 |
First woman Prime Minister |
Indira Gandhi, 1966 |
First Woman Railway Minister of India |
Mamata Banerjee |
First woman Speaker of the Lok Sabha |
Meira Kumar |
First woman State Finance Minister |
Dr. Upinderjit Kaur, in Punjab: October, 2010 |
First woman Supreme Court judge |
Justice M. Fathima Beevi |
First Woman to be the Chairperson of State Bank of India |
Arundhati Bhattacharya |
First Woman to become Railway Minister of India in two different Governments (NDA & UPA) |
Mamata Banerjee |
First Woman to become Railway Minister of India twice in her tenure |
Mamata Banerjee |
First woman to climb Mount Everest |
Bachendri Pal, 1984 |
First woman to cross English Channel |
Aarti Saha |
First woman to Cross Gobi Desert |
Sucheta Kadethankar (33): 2011 |
First woman to get Court martialed |
Anjali Gupta in 2005 |
First Woman to pilot a locomotive engine (train driver) |
Surekha Yadav |
First woman to receive Nobel Prize |
Mother Teresa of Calcutta |
First woman to win 1st round match in a Grand Slam event |
Nirupama Vaidyanathan beat Italian Gloria Pizzichini in the first round of the 1998 Australian Open |
First women's court in India |
Malda, West Bengal (24/1/2013) |
First woman to become Indian National Congress President |
Annie Besant |