Wikipedia:Today's featured list/July 4, 2011
To date, there have been 25 female officers in the United States Cabinet, including Hillary Clinton (pictured), the current Secretary of State. No woman held a Cabinet position before the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1920, which prohibits states and the federal government from denying any citizen the right to vote because of that citizen's sex. Frances Perkins was the first woman to serve in the Cabinet; she was appointed Secretary of Labor in 1933 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1953, Oveta Culp Hobby became the second woman to serve in the Cabinet, when she was named head of the then newly formed Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Patricia Roberts Harris, who was Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare before the department split and had earlier served as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in 1977, became the first female Secretary of Health and Human Services in 1979. Harris was also the first African American woman to serve in the Cabinet. (Full list...)