We saw the election of the first female speaker of the House, and the hiring of the first solo female news anchor. This also was a year of medical breakthroughs, errant beauty queens, and oodles of celeb breakups. Here are some of the ways women made a difference in 2006.
In politics, Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi of California was picked to take over as speaker of the House next year, after Democrats won control of the House in November's mid-term elections. She will be the first woman to have that title.
With speculation still high on what Hillary Clinton will do, in a "Today" show interview with host Meredith Vieira on Dec. 18, Clinton indicated she was close to a decision on whether she'd enter the 2008 Democratic presidential field.
Vieira, formerly of ABC's morning chatfest, "The View," took Katie Couric's place on "Today" this year after Couric vacated her spot on the NBC show to anchor "The CBS Evening News." In doing so, Couric became the first solo female evening anchor. Ultimately, Couric did little to change the program's ratings (it still trailed the NBC and ABC evening shows at the end of November sweeps), but her hiring made history.
In health, there were a number of breakthroughs that could help defend women against potentially deadly illnesses.
In June, the Food and
Less controversial was an announcement by the National Cancer Institute that the drug raloxifene, previously used to prevent and treat osteoporosis, was an effective treatment for breast cancer in post-menopausal women.
A study of 20,000 women — including 300 in Connecticut — showed that the drug worked as well in this population as tamoxifen, the drug commonly used for this purpose, but with fewer side effects.
In Iraq, women troops continue to share risks with their male counterparts and make up 15 percent of U.S. forces. American Jill Carroll, a freelance reporter for the Christian Science Monitor, was kidnapped at gunpoint in Baghdad in January.
She was held by a group called the Revenge Brigade, which demanded the United States release all Iraqi women prisoners. She was freed in late March, after condemning the American government in a video. After her release, she said she only made the video in exchange for her freedom.
Of course, no year is complete without a healthy dose of controversy and celebrity gossip, and 2006 was no exception.
In the last remaining weeks of the year, reports surfaced of Miss USA Tara Conner's wild behavior. Conner left her small town in Kentucky after winning the beauty title in April and moved to New York, where she allegedly drank heavily at city bars (she was underage at the time).
After speculation about whether she would be dethroned, entrepreneur Donald Trump, who owns the Miss Universe Organization that oversees the Miss USA pageant, let her off the hook. Conner entered rehab and was allowed to keep her title.
However, the near-dethroning led comedian and talk-show host Rosie O'Donnellto criticize Trump, saying that the twice-divorced man had no right to be a "moral compass" for young women like Conner. The comment caused a feud between O'Donnell — Vieira's replacement on "The View" and no stranger to controversy — and Trump, who struck back by calling her, among other things, "very, very unattractive" and "a bully."
A number of celebrity women found themselves in the news as they fell in love, fell out of love and gave birth.
And some did more than one in the same year. Witness actress Pamela Anderson, who married musician Kid Rock multiple times this year to show their love for one another. Sadly, that love was short-lived, as the couple also divorced this year.
Pop princess Britney Spears divorced as well, splitting from husband Kevin Federline only eight weeks after the birth of the couple's second child, Jayden James Federline.
Other celeb babies were born into happier circumstances. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes welcomed a baby girl, Suri, a few months before wedding at an Italian villa. And, of course, the media monster known as Brangelina (aka Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie) had a baby girl — little Shiloh Nouvel, who has mom's lips, dad's eyes and the world's rapt attention.
But beauty isn't everything, and no one proved that better than "Ugly Betty," one of the few new TV shows to become an immediate hit. The ABC comedy follows Betty Suarez (America Ferrera), a plain-Jane from Queens, N.Y., who lands an assistant job at a haughty fashion mag. The show hit big, proving you need not be a frisky housewife or hot castaway to get attention from the TV-viewing public.
We also lost a number of prominent women in 2006, including two major social activists, Betty Friedan and Coretta Scott King.
Friedan, who died at age 85, was a feminist icon and author of the groundbreaking book, "The Feminist Mystique," which challenged conventional ideas about women. She also co-founded the National Organization for Women.
King, the widow of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., took up her husband's work after his assassination and became an important activist herself. She died at age 78.
Another widow-activist lost this year was Dana Reeve, widow of actor Christopher Reeve. The singer-actress raised millions of dollars for spinal-cord paralysis research, following a riding accident that left her husband a quadriplegic. She continued the work after his death, until she succumbed to lung cancer this year at age 44.
Other women lost this year included: l Ann Richards, 73, outspoken former Texas governor
l Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, 80, first female to be American ambassador to the United Nations
l Actresses June Allyson, 88, Maureen Stapleton, 80, Shelley Winters, 85, and Jane Wyatt, 96 l Writers Bebe Moore Campbell, 56, Octavia Butler, 58, Muriel Spark, 88, and Wendy Wasserstein, 55 l Singers Ruth Brown, 78, and Anita O'Day, 87
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