| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| May 1 | Gwendolyn Brooks becomes first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in poetry, 1950 |
| May 2 | Catherine II ("the Great") of Russia born 1729 |
| May 3 | Belva Lockwood, after successfully lobbying Congress to end gender apartheid at the bar of the US Supreme Court, becomes the first woman to argue before that court, 1879 |
| May 4 | Anna Chandy born 1905 |
| May 5 | Dr. Dorothy H Andersen identifies the disease cystic fibrosis, 1938 |
| May 6 | Phebe Hanaford born 1829 |
| May 7 | Ruth Prawer Jhabvala born 1927 |
| May 8 | Mary Lou Williams born 1910 |
| May 9 | Journalist, author, and musician Philippa Duke Schuyler dies in a helicopter crash in Vietnam, 1967 |
| May 10 | Judith Jamison born 1944 |
| May 11 | Martha Graham born 1893 |
| May 12 | Sharon S Adams leaves Yokohama Japan on first solo trans-pacific crossing by a woman, 1969 |
| May 13 | Daphne du Maurier born 1907 |
| May 14 | Mary Williams born 1878 |
| May 15 | Mary Kies becomes the first US woman granted a patent, 1809 |
| May 16 | Mary Thygeson Shepardson born 1906 |
| May 17 | Hazel O'Leary born 1937 |
| May 18 | Aviator Jackie Cochran breaks the sound barrier, 1953 |
| May 19 | Dame Nellie Melba born 1861
Lorraine Hansberry born 1930 - African American author of "A Raisin in the Sun" |
| May 20 | Sigrid Undset born 1882 |
| May 21 | Frances Densmore born 1867 |
| May 22 | Mary Cassatt born 1844 |
| May 23 | Margaret Fuller born 1810 |
| May 24 | Helen Taussig born 1898 |
| May 25 | Madame CJ Walker died 1919 |
| May 26 | Sally Ride born 1951 |
| May 27 | Rachel Carson born 1907 |
| May 28 | May Swenson born 1919 |
| May 29 | Elizabeth Pringle born 1845 |
| May 30 | Astronomer Maria Mitchell becomes the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1848 |
| May 31 | Mary Hannah Fulton born 1854 |