Long before Amelia Earhart became a household name, a small but determined group of women had already taken to the skies. They flew in an era when airplanes were still new, unreliable, and widely considered too dangerous for anyone — let alone women. Crowds gathered to watch them, newspapers mocked or marveled at them, and aviation authorities in several countries refused to train them at all. None of that stopped them.
The story of women in flight actually begins before airplanes existed. In 1784, a French opera singer named Elisabeth Thible became the first woman to fly as a passenger in a hot air balloon. More than a century later, women began piloting heavier-than-air aircraft. In 1908, Thérèse Peltier became the first woman to pilot such a craft, taking the controls of a biplane in Turin, Italy. She flew about 200 meters — a short distance, but a historic one.
Another milestone came just two years later. Aida de Acosta had already made history in 1903 when she piloted a powered airship — a dirigible — over Paris, becoming the first woman to pilot a powered aircraft of any kind. These early flights were informal and largely undocumented at the time, but they cracked open the door for what was to come.
The first woman to earn an official pilot’s license was a Frenchwoman named Élise Deroche — who styled herself “Baroness de Laroche,” a title whose authenticity was widely questioned. In 1910, she received her license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), making her the world’s first officially licensed female pilot. She had survived a serious crash during training the year before, but returned to flying anyway. Her license opened the door for other women across Europe and America to pursue the same recognition.
In America, Harriet Quimby earned her pilot’s license in 1911, becoming the first American woman to do so. The following year, she became the first woman to fly solo across the English Channel — a crossing that shocked the aviation world. Quimby was also a journalist and used her writing platform to advocate for women in aviation. Her life was cut short in July 1912 when she was thrown from her plane during an air meet in Boston and killed.
Matilde Moisant earned her license just days after Quimby, in 1911, making her the second licensed female pilot in the United States. She and Quimby flew in the same exhibition circuits, competing for altitude and distance records in front of large crowds. Moisant was a fierce competitor and once broke the women’s altitude record, reaching over 1,200 feet — remarkable for that era.
Blanche Scott was another trailblazer of this period. Hired by the Curtiss Airplane Company to demonstrate aircraft safety, she became the first American woman to fly solo. For six years after that, she performed daring aerial stunts at exhibitions across the country. Scott was also the second woman to drive an automobile across the United States — a feat that alone would have defined most careers.
Belgian Hélène Dutrieu was equally fearless. A former cycling champion and stunt motorcyclist, she took to aviation with the same competitive drive she had shown in other sports. She became one of Europe’s most prominent early female pilots, earning her license and breaking records across the continent.
Ruth Law was another American woman who pushed aviation to its limits. In 1915, she looped the loop twice for a crowd at Daytona Beach, Florida, and later set a nonstop distance record that stood for both women and men. Law repeatedly challenged the idea that flying required physical strength beyond a woman’s capability — and proved it wrong with hard data: miles flown, records broken, flights logged.
Of all the barriers these women faced, Bessie Coleman faced the steepest. Born in Texas in 1892, she was denied entry to every American flight school she applied to — not because of her skill, but because of her race. She responded by traveling to France, learning to fly there, and returning to America in 1921 as the first Black woman in the world to hold a pilot’s license. She opened a flight school after returning to the United States and spent her career proving that aviation was not reserved for white men. She was killed in a plane crash in 1926, at age 34.
Willa Brown followed in Coleman’s path, becoming the first African-American woman to receive a commission as a lieutenant in the U.S. Civil Air Patrol. She also co-founded the National Airmen’s Association of America and fought to integrate Black pilots into the U.S. military — work that directly influenced the creation of the Tuskegee Airmen program.
In Europe, women were breaking records with the same intensity. Hélène Boucher of France held multiple women’s speed records before dying in a crash in 1934. Maryse Bastié, also French, began flying after her husband — a World War I pilot — died in a crash in 1926. She supported herself through aerial acrobatics, eventually buying her own plane and rising to the rank of Captain in the French Air Force.
Young Elinor Smith made headlines in 1927 at just 16 years old, when she attempted to set a new women’s altitude record. Nicknamed “The Flying Flapper of Freeport,” she went on to become one of the most accomplished aviators of her generation. She and pilot Bobby Trout later took part in the first women’s refueling flight for endurance — a test of how long a plane could stay airborne with mid-air fuel transfers.
Ruth Nichols was another American aviator who pushed every boundary she could find. At one point in her career, she held simultaneous world records for a female pilot in speed, altitude, and distance — three separate categories, all at the same time. She was among the most decorated women fliers of the late 1920s and early 1930s.
English aviator Amy Johnson made international headlines in 1930 when she became the first woman to fly solo from London to Australia — a journey of roughly 11,000 miles. She later set additional long-distance records, some flown alongside her husband, Jim Mollison. Johnson was killed in 1941 while delivering an RAF aircraft in bad weather during World War II.
New Zealand’s Jean Batten earned the nickname “Greta Garbo of the Skies” — partly for her striking looks and partly for her intensely private nature. In 1936, she completed the first solo flight from England to New Zealand, a route no one had flown solo before, man or woman. Two years later, she became the first woman awarded the medal of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.
Winifred Spooner of England was another pilot whose courage went far beyond the cockpit. In 1930, she and a co-pilot set out to fly from London to Cape Town in under five days. When the plane ditched into the sea off the Italian coast during the night, Spooner swam two miles to shore to get help — leaving her co-pilot, who could not swim, sitting on the fuselage in open water until rescuers arrived.
Maryse Hilsz of France built her reputation on endurance flights, pushing aircraft and pilot to their limits across long-distance routes. In 1933, the FAI awarded her and Amelia Earhart joint “Woman of the Year” honors. During World War II, she served as a member of the French Resistance.
Florence Lowe Barnes — known as “Tomboy of the Air” — entered the First National Women’s Air Derby in 1929, a cross-country race from Santa Monica, California to Cleveland, Ohio. She was one of the most colorful and outspoken aviators of her era, known as much for her personality as her flying skills.
Aviation crossed racial and national lines in unexpected ways during this period. Katherine Sai Fun Choung earned her pilot’s license in 1930 and promptly returned to China, where she opened an aviation school for girls — bringing the movement for women in flight to a new continent. Elisabeth Lion of France earned the Chevalier of the Legion of Honor for her contributions to aviation. And Sabiha Gökçen of Turkey went further than almost any other woman of this era, becoming the world’s first female combat pilot.
Lady Louise Montagu, daughter of the Duke of Manchester, represented a different side of women’s aviation in the 1930s — demonstrating that the pursuit of flight had spread well beyond professional aviators and exhibition fliers. She completed her “A” license and a blind flying course at Heaton Airport in Chester, joining a growing number of women for whom flying was a serious technical pursuit, not a publicity stunt.
Amelia Earhart is the name most people know, and by 1933 she had already built a career full of records and firsts. A photograph taken that year shows her landing her Lockheed Vega at Los Angeles Municipal Airport after a transcontinental flight she described as the most hazardous trip she had ever made. The crowd gave her a tremendous ovation. Her fame was real, but it was built on the same foundation as the women who came before her: skill, persistence, and a refusal to be turned away.
The resistance these women encountered was consistent and came from multiple directions. Male pilots often resisted flying alongside them. Airplane owners refused to let them rent or borrow aircraft. Families pressured them to stop. The public debated whether flying was “unfeminine.” Some argued women were physically incapable of handling aircraft at high speeds and altitudes. The women answered every one of those arguments the same way — by flying.
