Making History One Glass Ceiling at a Time

1960

When the CSU system was formed with California Governor Pat Brown’s signing of the Donahoe Higher Education Act of 1960—which followed the recommendations of “A Master Plan for Higher Education in California, 1960-1975”—two women were appointed as founding members of its 16-member Board of Trustees: higher education advocate and activist Margaret (Peggy) Bates (pictured here) and educator and longtime member of the California State Board of Education Mabel E. Kinney.

1970

San Diego State College (now San Diego State University) became the first university in the U.S. to offer a Women’s Studies Program, with official approval granted in May 1970. In 1974, the program became a department with dedicated faculty. The university began offering a related minor in 1975, a bachelor’s degree in 1982 and a master’s degree in 1995. Today called the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, it now includes 10 tenure track faculty and 100 majors and minors.

1974

Marjorie Downing Wagner, who served as president of Sonoma State from 1974 to 1976, was the first woman appointed president of a California State University. The university’s third president who later served as the vice chancellor for academic affairs for the entire CSU system, Wagner was known as a pioneering educator who broke down gender barriers in higher education leadership.

1974

Abby Abinanti, who earned a bachelor’s in journalism from Humboldt State (now Cal Poly Humboldt) in 1970, became California’s first female Native American lawyer in 1974. In 1997, she became the first Native American woman to serve as a judicial officer in California. Today, she serves as the Chief Judge of the Yurok Tribal Court.

1976

When a student trustee position was created on the CSU Board of Trustees in 1976, Kathleen Carlson was appointed as the first in the role, serving a two-year term while a graduate student at San Francisco State.

1979

Claudia Hampton, the first Black individual appointed to the CSU’s Board of Trustees, became the board’s first female chair in 1979. A retired school administrator, Hampton sat on the board from 1974 to 1994 and served as chair three times. A scholarship in her name recognizes disadvantaged students pursuing a career in teaching.

1979

During the fall 1979 semester, women made up more than half of the CSU’s student body for the first time, at 51%.

1987

When a Congressional resolution established Women’s History Month in 1987, Sonoma State alumna Molly Murphy MacGregor was lauded as its “godmother” for her work that led to its creation. Co-founder of the National Women’s History Project, now known as the National Women’s History Alliance, MacGregor and a group of women launched the first Women’s History Week in local Sonoma schools in 1979, a movement that led to the declaration of the commemorative month.

1992

Blenda J. Wilson was the first woman and first African American to serve as president of CSUN, as well as the first African American woman to lead a U.S. campus with 25,000 or more students. She was praised for maintaining campus operations and leading its $400 million reconstruction after the 1994 Northridge earthquake damaged 107 buildings. A campus courtyard is dedicated to her.

1993

As part of a nine-day mission aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1993, San Diego State alumna and astronaut Ellen Ochoa became the first Latina to travel to space. Since then, she has traveled to space three more times and logged nearly 1,000 hours in orbit. In May 2024, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her contributions to space exploration.

1997

Cal Poly Pomona alumna Violet Palmer, a retired NBA and WNBA referee, was the first woman to officiate in a major U.S. sport league when she officiated an NBA game between the Dallas Mavericks and the Vancouver (now Memphis) Grizzlies on October 31, 1997.

1998

Nancy Grosz Sager is a leading advocate for the deaf and hard of hearing who earned her master’s degree in deaf education from Fresno State in 1977. She led the charge for a California law passed in 1998 that mandated newborn hearing screenings, ensuring that every infant with identified hearing loss would be referred to Early Start programs and provided additional resources. This policy later became a recommendation of the National Joint Committee on Infant Hearing in 2007. In 2024, she donated $250,000 to Fresno State’s The Silent Garden, which provides education programs, workshops and resources to the deaf and hard of hearing community.

1999

San Francisco State alumna and astronomer Debra Fischer began searching for exoplanets as a postdoctoral fellow at the university in 1997. In 1999, she discovered the first known multiple planet system, among the hundreds of extrasolar planets she has also discovered.

2003

Stanislaus State alumna and chemist Nancy Stoyer was part of the team at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that discovered or verified five new superheavy elements, numbers 113-118; 113 (Nihonium) and 115 (Moscovium) in 2003.

2009

When President Barack Obama appointed Cal Poly Pomona alumna Hilda Solis to the post of U.S. Secretary of Labor in February 2009, she became the first Latina to hold a U.S. cabinet position. She now represents the first supervisorial district on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

2010

Linda Woolverton—screenwriter, playwright and novelist with a bachelor’s from Cal State Long Beach and master’s from Cal State Fullerton—was the first woman screenwriter with a solo-writing credit on a film to gross $1 billion with the release of “Alice in Wonderland” in 2010.

2012

In 2012, Cal State Fullerton developed the organization Women in Computer Science and Engineering (WiCSE) to increase the number of women in the STEM workforce. The program offers academic and career support, in-house tutoring and holistic programming to prepare students for future careers and help them build community. Other CSUs also run similar programs to encourage women to pursue STEM studies, such as Cal Poly Pomona’s Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) program and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo’s Women's Engineering Program.

2015

Cal Maritime alumna Kate McCue became the first-ever American woman to captain a mega cruise ship when she took the helm of the Celebrity Summit in 2015. She now commands the Celebrity Edge, one of the cruise liner’s newest ships. With McCue at the helm, the Edge made headlines as the first cruise ship sailing with guests from a U.S. port after the pandemic shutdown of 2020.

2018

With the appointment of former CSU Bakersfield President Lynnette Zelezny to the role in July 2018, the majority of California State University presidents were women for the first time in the system’s history—with women leading 12 of the 23 universities.

2018

Aisha Wahab, who holds a bachelor’s from San José State and a master’s from Cal State East Bay, became one of the first two Afghan women elected to public office in the U.S. when she was elected to the Hayward City Council in 2018. She is currently a California State Senator.

2019

Major General Laura Yeager, who graduated from Cal State Long Beach’s ROTC program, became the first woman to command a U.S. Army infantry division on June 29, 2019. She held the position until May 2022.

2020

Alyssa Nakken, a Sacramento State alumna who played first base for the university’s softball team, made history as the first woman to be a full-time coach in Major League Baseball when the San Francisco Giants promoted her to the position in 2020. She coached her first exhibition game in 2020 and first regular season game in 2022—then made further headlines when she became the first MLB coach to take maternity leave in 2024. She is currently the assistant director for player development for the Cleveland Guardians.

2022

An advocate for Asian Americans and other marginalized communities with 50 years’ experience in the entertainment industry, Wenda Fong became the first Asian American woman to serve as chair of the CSU Board of Trustees in 2022. Since her appointment as a trustee in 2018, she has tirelessly supported students through her advocacy, mentorship and a scholarship endowment toward the CSU Trustees’ Award for Outstanding Achievement.

2022

In 2022, Cal Maritime appointed Captain Samar Bannister, who graduated from the university’s Marine Transportation program in 2000, as the first female captain of the Training Ship Golden Bear and the first woman to serve as its Director of Marine Programs. Since her appointment, Bannister has led concerted efforts to outreach to and recruit women cadets—which led to a significant increase in the number of women cadets participating in the 2024 Summer Sea Term.

2023

With the start of her tenure in 2023, Mildred García became the first Latina chancellor of the California State University and the first Latina in the nation to lead a four-year public university system. Previously, she served as president of Cal State Fullerton from 2012 to 2018 and as president of CSU Dominguez Hills from 2007 to 2012. The California Legislative Women’s Caucus honored García as a 2024 California Woman Making HERstory.

2024

In October 2024, Cal State LA dedicated a bronze statue to alumna and tennis star Billie Jean King, known for her fight for women’s equality. In 1973, King triumphed in the groundbreaking “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match against Bobby Riggs, catapulting the fight onto an international stage. King attended Cal State LA from 1961 to 1964 but did not finish due to her tennis career. During the statue unveiling ceremony, she announced that she would be finishing her degree at the university.

Today

In addition to a woman serving as the CSU’s chancellor, women currently make up more than half of the CSU’s university presidents and half of the university’s Board of Trustees appointed members. Shown here, CSU Trustee Wenda Fong and Chancellor Mildred García discuss their career trajectories during a “Journeys to Leadership” event at CSU Channel Islands.

Making History One Glass Ceiling at a Time

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