Breaking the Glass Ceiling

Many ranks, awards, or other achievements in life have traditionally been reserved for people of a privileged gender, race, or other such category. This trope is about characters from a non-favored group who break through such "ceilings"— for example, the first woman to join a previously all-male military unit, or the first black guy on the town council. If they've already achieved their feat, it can be used to characterise them as tough, determined, and/or ambitious (depending on what they achieved and how they did it). If they're still aspiring, it can be used to give them motivation and drive the plot.

Characters like this may have to go through a Jackie Robinson Story in which they face hostility from people who don't believe they should be there. This might involve a Double Standard which requires them to work twice as hard to prove themselves, or they may have to conspicuously save the day in an All of the Other Reindeer moment. Their talents may be squandered on menial jobs ("You, Get Me Coffee") and they'll often be Eating Lunch Alone. Even if the people in charge actually want the ceiling broken, other people may still mutter that the ceiling-breaker only succeeded thanks to affirmative action.

Alternatively, they may bypass the Jackie Robinson route of proving themselves and find a different means to break the ceiling. People who find their advancement unjustly blocked may not care about the rules - they may try Loophole Abuse, or they may be in a position to simply say "Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!" (via Nepotism or Sleeping Their Way to the Top)— if so, Never a Self-Made Woman may apply. If their Ambition Is Evil, they could even obtain their breakthrough via Klingon Promotion. A more subtle approach is to sneak around the ceiling by pretending to be part of the group it doesn't apply to - for example, by employing Sweet Polly Oliver.

Even when characters who break a ceiling are successful and celebrated, however, they're still forging a new path by themselves and may be a Fish out of Water in ways that their colleagues don't understand. If ceiling-breaking characters are Famed In-Story and held up as examples for others to follow, they may be glad to know that they're inspiring people and making it easier for the next generation, but others will find the pressure unwelcome and just want to be treated normally. And just because an individual is accepted, it doesn't mean the overall prejudice is gone: bigots may simply have created a Bigotry Exception by ignoring the ceiling-breaker's point of difference ("You Know I'm Black, Right?") or judging them A Credit to Their Race. Occasionally, ceiling-breaking characters will be called a Category Traitor by members of their own group, having "joined the system" and become "tame". These accusations may even be right - the successful character may be a Boomerang Bigot or The Quisling, and not rocking the boat may be a condition of their acceptance.

May involve Overly Narrow Superlative. See also Stay in the Kitchen, "Gender-Normative Parent" Plot, You Go, Girl!, and The Smurfette Principle. Not to be confused with breaking literal glass ceilings. If the plot is played as An Aesop, which it often is, see Prejudice Aesop.

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Examples:

Advertising

• In an ad for a brand of chips called Grain Waves, a grain becomes the first of his kind to grow up to be a chip instead of bread or porridge like his family.

Comic Books

• In Top 10, Joe Pi is the first officer from the Ninth Parallel (an all-robot world) to serve in the Tenth Precinct. Since Neopolis still has... issues with its robot population, he initially faces a lot of hostility with his fellow officers.
• Wonder Woman: Suzan Patience becomes the first woman to become a prison warden in the US.

Fan Works

• From the Professional Wrestling series The JWL: The main event of the second PPV, JWL SuperBrawl I, was the 22-woman Royal Rumble to crown the inaugural JWL Women's Champion, which was won by Molly Holly. Women's matches would main event JWL TV here and there too.
• Star Wars vs Warhammer 40K: In Season 3, Spikes becomes the first clone trooper to be promoted to Admiral in the Republic Navy following his heroics at the Battle of System K479, where a dozen Imperial warships were destroyed thanks to his imaginative tactics. This is impressive because even becoming a naval captain is a pipe dream for the majority of clone troopers due to the pervasive belief among the Navy's higher-ups that clones are unsuited for officer roles.

Films — Animated

• Zootopia has Judy Hopps, who's the first bunny to become a police officer in Zootopia (a force normally comprised of megafauna and/or predators). As a result, people initially don't take her seriously.
• In Mulan, Mulan at the end is asked by the Emperor to join his Council. It's downplayed, as she refuses the offer because she wants to go home, but even the job offer itself is groundbreaking because up until then the Council had been reserved for men.

Films — Live-Action

• G.I. Jane is about the first woman to join the the U.S. Navy Combined Reconnaissance Team^note (fictional, but similar to the SEALs.). It's part of a program to test the viability of allowing more, but plenty of people don't want her to succeed. Besides the brutal nature of the training itself, she has to deal with things such as accusations of being a lesbian (this being in the days when you weren't allowed to openly be so in the US military). Even things which seem like support are not actually support - she receives preferential treatment in her physical training until she rejects it on the grounds that it undermines the point she's there to prove (and also that it makes everyone resent her).
• In Down Periscope, Lt. Emily Lake is the first woman to serve on a submarine of the United States Navy. Commander Dodge, not having been informed in advance, initially thinks that his crew have hired a stripper, and they do indeed treat her mostly as eye candy to start with (which leads them to sabotage her laundry to make her uniform more revealing). Her lack of real-world experience (and lack of confidence) doesn't help her in establishing her credentials, but when a particularly tricky situation calls for her specialist training, she rises to the occasion and proves her skill as a dive officer.
• Zig-Zagged in Captain America: The First Avenger: Steve Rogers in the beginning of the movie is disqualified from joining the Army due to being undersized (short and severely underweight) and suffering from Asthma along with other health problems, despite this he disagrees with the military's medical rules and believes that despite his disabilities he should have as much of a right and obligation to serve like any other man of his time and going as far as applying at numerous recruitment centres in hope of getting a different response from the 1940's equivalent to MEPS. During one fateful night when he was about to apply yet again (this time lying on his medical history questionnaire) Steve gets noticed by War Department scientist Dr Abraham Erskine who grants him a waiver after being impressed by his strong moral character and recruits him for a special Army recruit intake run by the newly formed Strategic Scientific Reserve with the purpose of deciding who will become the candidate for their Super-Soldier procedure. Steve despite being handicapped and not initially taken seriously by program coordinator Colonel Phillips (and being outright bullied by the physically larger recruit Hodge), does unexpectedly well during his physically demanding training and proves himself more morally righteous than all the other larger and healthier recruits when he was prepared to give his life to save everyone from a (fake) grenade thrown by Phillips at the recruits during a PT session, which leads him to be selected to receive the Super-Solder serum. After receiving the serum Steve Rogers becomes Captain America and ultimately goes from a mocked Army reject to an inspirational war hero thats admired by everyone. Though what makes Steve Rogers's case interesting is that after breaking the glass ceiling, he is rewarded by undergoing a procedure that removed the immutable characteristics that handicapped his career prospects to begin with (basically turning him into a superior version of an large and healthy man) rather than being fully embraced by the Army in his original form.
• Courage Under Fire is all about whether or not Captain Walden, an army helicopter pilot, should be the the first woman awarded the Medal of Honor (posthumously, in this case). Surviving members of the unit paint very different pictures of her, ranging from heroic to cowardly - in the end, the latter claim is revealed to be a cover-up of the accusers' own misdeeds and the medal is awarded. (In real life, Mary Walker had already became the first female recipient of the Medal of Honor in 1865, although she was a surgeon rather than a combatant.)
• In Cop Land, the protagonist Freddy Heflin became the Sheriff of a New Jersey town despite being deaf in one ear and previously being medically disqualified by the NYPD because of it. Despite his partial disability he is respected by the town's residents and is not seen as any less capable as a Law Enforcement officer, and the chauvinism directed at him from the NYPD officers seem to be more because of them not taking cops from small departments seriously as opposed to them disrespecting him for having a hearing impairment. The fact that his condition was acquired as the result of him saving a local girl from drowning as a teenager probably helped (to the point that a police union leader told him at a funeral of a presumed dead officer that he would try to use his connections to waiver the NYPD's medical rules so he can transfer if he's interested).
• In Bright, Nick Jakoby is the first orc police officer in the Los Angeles Police Department, in an alternate Earth where orcs and elves live alongside regular humans. Interspecies tensions make this difficult for him: some orcs accuse him of being a Category Traitor, while many of his fellow officers distrust him.
• Subverted in Sky High (2005), the main character, Will Stronghold, goes to a Superhero School, and when is shown that he doesn't have any superpowers he is sent to the "Hero Support Class" (Sidekicks), in the middle of the movie he actually develop superpowers, and his friends say that he now is opening new roads by being a superstrong sidekick, then he is informed that he was transfered to the superheroes class.
• Django Unchained: Dr. Schultz, in his plan to get Django's lover back from Calvin Candie's house, suggests Django to pretend to be a black slaver (the story is set in Deep South before the American Civil War, so finding a black man in that role would have been decidedly unusual).
• In Hairspray, Inez Stubbs becomes the first black female to win Miss Teenage Hairspray, thus integrating the Corny Collins Show.

Literature

• From Discworld:
  • Equal Rites features Eskarina, a girl who wants to be a wizard and not a witch. Both witches and wizards would mostly prefer that this not occur, but she becomes the first female student at the wizards' Unseen University anyway. Based on her eventual reappearance in I Shall Wear Midnight, she did well for herself - but Unseen University still seems to be a male institution despite having made an exception for her.
  • Men at Arms sees the Night Watch admit three new officers, each of whom is a "first": Cuddy (first dwarf), Detritus (first troll), and Angua (first woman and also first werewolf). They are explicitly added to the Watch in the name of diversity, since the city is itself increasingly diverse, but Commander Vimes doesn't approve (although his prejudices add up to disliking everyone equally, and he's also annoyed at having the decision pushed on him rather than being allowed to decide for himself).
  • In Feet of Clay, Dorfl is not only the first golem to join the Watch, he's also the first to be able to choose to do so, as Carrot freed him from his Servant Race status by including his bill of sale along with his chem. What is more important to the rest of the world is that he's the first ever golem to have a voice, as he was rebuilt with a mouth. The religious community are particularly unhappy with it, as their usual trump-card argument is entirely ineffective on a golem made of clay.
  • In Thud!, Sally is the first vampire in the watch, but she gets in due to the Temperance League and Vetinari forcing her on Vimes (despite his well-known aversion to vampires). When he discovers she's a spy for the Low King, he keeps her on the force because she is useful, but is happy that this means he won't have any more people forced on him).
• In Star Wars Legends, the Empire had a strong preference towards people who were both human and male. However, there were people who managed to overcome this prejudice and achieve high rank anyway.
  • One example is Thrawn (appearing in The Thrawn Trilogy, the stand-alone book Thrawn, and elsewhere). As a non-human, he faced a lot of prejudice in his early service with the Empire. However, he was enough of a Magnificent Bastard to get himself all the way to the rank of Grand Admiral.
  • The Jedi Academy Trilogy introduced Natasi Daala, who would not have achieved her rank except for the fact that she was sleeping with Grand Moff Tarkin. There seem to be differing opinions as to whether his favouritism promoted her beyond her abilities or simply allowed her to claim her rightful due - but deservedly or not, she was the first woman to make admiral in the Imperial fleet.
• In the Vorkosigan Saga, Duv Galeni is the first Komarran member of ImpSec, the security and intelligence service of the Barrayaran Empire, which conquered his home planet. He gets trouble from both sides - some Komarrans naturally view him as a traitor and a quisling (not least his own militant father), while many Barrayarans don't trust him and are waiting for him to slip up. However, he believes that integration and cooperation between Kommarr and Barrayar is the only way good forward for either of them, and that putting up with the problems will make things easier for those who follow after him.
• In the Tortall Universe, Alanna becomes the first female knight in centuries^note The practice of women knights in Tortall was abolished 200 years earlier by conservative nobility but this isn't publicly known until after she's done it because she disguised herself as a boy. As a result of Alanna's achievement, Kel is then able to become the first girl to train openly (and she insists on wearing dresses at dinner to ensure people don't forget that she's a girl). While she lacks the burden of hiding however, Kel is heavily scrutinised both by her traditionalist training master and by the rest of high society (not helped by slander that alleged Alana used the Gift to make it easier to succeed), which drives her to only push harder; her success finally encourages a greater number of girls to apply.
• In Robyn Bennis's Signal Airship series, Josette Dupre becomes the first woman to command an airship in Garnia's Air Signal Corp. The army began accepting women mainly due to manpower shortages, but they're technically only auxiliary officers (so can't command "real" officers) and are supposed to be dropped off before their airships enter combat (which is almost never practical). Josette, contrary to regulations, took command of a damaged airship and did well enough to get appointed to full command of new one, but the general forced to appoint her is strongly hostile (since her heroics saved the day when his battle plans couldn't). He attempts to sabotage her career.
• Artemis Fowl: During a heated discussion with Commander Root, Holly accuses his endless complaints and dressing-downs of being solely based on the fact that she's female. He admits that this is so...but for an entirely opposite reason: As there are two females in the LEP Recon (and one is a bimbo limited to announcements who only got a job because she's descended from one of the fairies' kings), she has to be better than all others so more women will think of joining.
• Honorverse: Lieutenant Abigail Owens is the first native-born Grayson female to ever hold military rank. Though she's more a case of sidestepping the ceiling — while she's officially part of the Grayson Space Navy, she went to Manticore's military academy and so far in the novels has been serving exclusively on Manticoran ships. Officially this is to let her gain experience before she eventually moves back to the GSN, but there's a certain amount of "make sure her eventual GSN superiors can't just shove her off into a more 'appropriate' female posting" going on as well.
• The protagonist of The Helmsman Saga is the first Carescian to finish the Helmsman Academy by virtue of the Lowered Recruiting Standards law.
• In Rex Stout's 1937 mystery The Hand In The Glove, a female private detective is not considered completely outrageous, but when two women try to start their own agency without a man in charge, it becomes a huge scandal, and the Bonner & Raffrey agency is criticized and mocked in the press.
• In Red Storm Rising, there's Vice Admiral Richard Pipes, who is described as "the first black submariner to make three-star rank, a man who had paid his dues with performance as he'd climbed up the ladder in what had traditionally been a whites-only profession."
• The Dreamblood Duology: Hanani is the first woman to be allowed to join the Sharers of Hananja because of her talent for Healing magic and is very aware of it. She binds her breasts and wears a male uniform at first, but realizes she's both setting a precedent and making herself miserable in an effort to placate people who still disapprove of her, gains some self-confidence, and switches back to women's clothing.
• In The Berenstain Bears book "The Female Fullback", Bertha becomes the first girl to be on the school's soccer team.
• The Black Magician Trilogy: Sonea is the first non-aristocrat to be accepted into Imardin's Wizarding School, solely because her innate magic is vastly too strong to risk leaving untrained. She finds herself mostly ostracized as a "slum girl" and obsessively dedicates herself to becoming as skilled as she is powerful, to make clear that she's earned her place there.
• The Goblin Emperor: Kiru Athmaza is the first woman ever to become one of the Emperor's Nohecharei, his personal bodyguards.
• Into the Drowning Deep: Heather the submersible operator is driven to become the first human to reach the bottom of the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, not least in order to win that record as a Deaf woman. Her eagerness leads her to ignore Mission Control's warnings to abort, which results in her death.
• In A Memoir by Lady Trent, Thomas Wilker becomes the first non-gentry member of the Philosopher's Colloquium. After five books of adventures, scientific discoveries, and discovering the Draconeans themselves, Isabella becomes the first woman to be admitted.
• In Nickolai of the North, Nickolai's mother Ella becomes the first woman to compete in the elf kingdom's sleigh races and the first woman to win them. Other elves are skeptical about her at first, but when she wins, they cheer for her heartily.
• In The Stormlight Archive, Vorin gender roles discourage women from politics and combat. The spren who choose Knights Radiant don't discriminate by gender, however, with Jasnah and Shallan being some of the first Radiants assembled and Lyn the first to openly train for a Knighthood. Jasnah also becomes the first Queen of Alethkar in the third book.
• Temeraire: After joining Temeraire's campaign for British dragons to gain the vote, political representation, and proper salaries, Perscitia becomes the first dragon Member of Parliament by the last book.
• In Warrior Cats, the Clans believe that only Clanborn cats make good warriors, and taunt Fireheart for having been born a kittypet (pet owned by humans), but he eventually becomes the first kittypet-born Clan leader in the Clans' memory. In the second series, Mothwing becomes the first rogue-born medicine cat (The Medic / her Clan's spiritual leader), and Firestar was even used as an example when cats protested her becoming a warrior: "If a kittypet can become a Clan leader, why should rogues not be welcome as warriors?"
• A Song of Ice and Fire: Subverted with Rhaenyra Targaryen, who de facto reigned as Queen of the Seven Kingdoms for half a year during a civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons. She insisted to reign because her father had designated her as heir, defying a precedent made by her great-grandfather that women were unable to inherit. Instead of opening doors for women to sit on the Iron Throne, all she did was convincing everyone further that women are incapable of ruling the Seven Kingdoms, because her disastrous tenure turned off a lot of nobles from the idea that a queen can rule over them. The stigma continues to haunt the realm ever since, as multiple female candidates to the Iron Throne were rejected because of their gender alone. And Rhaenyra herself is branded an usurper for "stealing" the birthright of her half-brother Aegon II (for instance, Westerosi history books deemed Aegon as the only monarch who sat during the Dance), even though it's her descendants, and not Aegon's, who continued the Targaryen line.
• In The Story of Saiunkoku, Shuurei wants to become a government administrator, but the required Imperial Examinations can only be taken by men. She has a roundabout route of achieving this goal, becoming a consort (and unofficial tutor and advisor) to the Emperor first.

Live-Action TV

• In Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Ray Holt is the first openly gay man to reach the rank of police captain. While the fact that he's both gay and black has exposed him to a fair bit of prejudice, his "rarity value" can still cause him problems even when people aren't being hostile — his long, unwanted spell in Public Relations was at least partly because the department thought he was a good way to show off their strides towards diversity.
• The Chair (2021): Ji-yoon is the first woman of color to lead Pembroke University's English department.
• Heavily downplayed with the Black faction in House of the Dragon, despite appearances (and how audience reception would have it) with the Greens being the Heir Club for Men. While the point of the faction is ensuring Rhaenyra's succession (and the support of the previously spurned claimant, Princess Rhaenys) does give off the impression that they carry this belief, their main claim to legitimacy is the consistently-feudal value of absolute primogeniture, i.e. the eldest child succeeds regardless of gender. It does help of course that Rhaenyra's succession was established by public royal decree. The fact that the sequel series, Game of Thrones, pointedly does not mention any other queens-regnant implies that Rhaenyra didn't do much to break the ceiling.
• Anita Van Buren in Law & Order, similarly, is one of the first black women to make Lieutenant in the NYPD. She constantly has to battle with her superiors, especially after she files a discrimination lawsuit when a less-qualified white woman is promoted instead of her. Her detectives are assigned to menial and humiliating tasks, and she's given less support on high-profile investigations as retribution. At one point, her bosses tell her outright if she wants more resources for her squad she would have to resign as their commander.
• Star Trek franchise (in order of internal chronology):
  • Star Trek: Enterprise: T'Pol is the first Vulcan to serve for any length of time on a human vessel (Jossing decades of Fanon that Spock was.) Another example is when Trip becomes, for lack of a better word, pregnant by an alien, he becomes not only the first recorded man to get pregnant, but the first human to get pregnant by a non-human.
  • Star Trek: Discovery: Saru is the first Kelpian in Starfleet.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation: Worf is the first Klingon in Starfleet (he was brought up by humans), and Data is the first android. An exchange program allowed Will Riker to become the first human to serve on a Klingon ship.
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Nog becomes the first Ferengi in Starfleet, uniquely after having been a recurring non-military character for a long time.
• Parodied on Saturday Night Live during the Baseball Strike of 1994 and 1995. They had a series of shorts shot as a documentary on Replacement Baseball. (To those who don't remember, that was when the teams brought in new players to replace the striking ones.) One short shows the breaking of the color barrier... a few minutes after they started hiring players. The gender barrier fell a few minutes later.
• In Trust, one of the things that motivates Paul Getty III's kidnappers is that their boss is planning to have his son Francesco become the first boy from their village to go to university.
• In Necessary Roughness, Rex Evans becomes the first openly-gay football player in the NFL (this was before Michael Sam came to prominence in real life). Fortunately, his buddy TK supports him, if only because TK is an Attention Whore who realizes that being an ally will boost his profile.
• On Mad Men, Peggy is the first female copy writer. She starts out simply feeding ideas to the male copywriters who then present the ideas as their own. During this time, she's paid as a secretary (a much lower salary) and expected to complete all of her secretarial work during billing hours and do copy writing in her free time. Later, she is promoted to junior copywriter, even though there are no male junior copywriters. Eventually, she is made a fully copywriter.

Professional Wrestling

• In WWE, there have been a few firsts in the company:
  • Bayley and Sasha Banks were the first women to compete in the main event of a WWE pay-per-view at NXT Takeover: Respect in 2015.
  • A year later, Sasha Banks faced Charlotte in the first ever women's Hell in a Cell match, which also main evented the Hell in a Cell pay-per-view.
  • Darren Young became the first openly gay man to compete in the WWE.
  • In 1998, Jacqueline became the first African-American female to win the WWE Women's Championship, and in 2016, she became the first African-American woman to be inducted to the WWE Hall of Fame.
  • Chyna became the first woman to hold the Intercontinental Championship in October 1999. Months before, she was the first of three women in WWE history to compete in the Royal Rumble match, followed by Beth Phoenix (in 2010) and Kharma (in 2012).
  • On a 2003 episode of Monday Night Raw, Lita faced Victoria in the first ever women's steel cage match.
  • Carmella won the first ever women's Money in the Bank Ladder match, in which the winner is guaranteed a title shot for the Women's Championship anytime that she wants. James Ellsworth actually won it for her.
  • The 2018 edition of the Royal Rumble featured the first ever Women's Royal Rumble Match.
• CHIKARA lives and breathes this trope.
  • The main event of CHIKARA Cibernetico: The Animated Series, November 12, 2011, was the Team Hallowicked^note The Spectral Envoy (Hallowicked and UltraMantis Black)/Green Ant/The Throwbacks (Dasher Hatfield and Sugar Dunkerton)/"The Queen of Wrestling" Sara Del Rey/The Young Bucks (Matt and Nick Jackson)-Team Donst^note Die Bruderschaft des Kreuzes (Ares/Tim Donst/Delirious/Jakob Hammermeier/Tursas)/The Batiri (Obariyon/Kodama/Kobald) Torneo Cibernetico (an 8-on-8 elimination match that can have only person left.) Sara Del Rey became the first woman to win a Torneo Cibernetico, including eliminating half of the rudo team by herself, including eliminating the BDK's monster Tursas.
  • During the "Pre-Show-A-Go-Go" before the 2014 Season Finale iPPV Tomorrow Never Dies on December 6, 2014, Heidi Lovelace defeated Missile Assault Ant in the final of the CHIKARA Young Lions Cup Tournament, making her the first female Young Lions Cup Champion. She would go on to be the second-longest reigning YLC Champion after the inaugural Champion Hallowicked.
  • At the 2015 Season Finale Top Banana on December 5, 2015, Crown and Court (Princess Kimberlee/Jervis Cottonbelly/Los Ice Creams (Ice Cream Jr. and El Hijo del Ice Cream) defeated The Wrecking Crew (Max Smashmaster/Blaster ]McMassive/Flex Rumblecrunch/Jaka) in the finals of the season-long Challenge of the Immortals tournament when Kimberlee powerbombed McMassive off the top and pinned him with the Alligator Clutch. This gave all four Crown and Court members the three points needed to challenge for either the CHIKARA Grand Championship or the CHIKARA Campeonatos de Parejas (tag team titles). The main event was CHIKARA Grand Champion Hallowicked successfully defending the title against former Champions Eddie Kingston and Icarus in a Triple Threat Match. After the match, Kimberlee ran to the ring and cashed in her title shot and proceeded to defeat Hallowicked for the title in under three minutes. Because Heidi was still the Young Lions Cup Champion at the time, this was the first time in a non-women's promotion that both singles titles were held by women.
  • At King of Trios 2016 Night III, September 4, 2016, Team Sendai Girls (Cassandra Miyagi, Dash Chisako and Meiko Satomura) defeated Team JWP^note Japanese Women Pro-Wrestling Project (Command Bolshoi, Hanako Nakamori and Manami Katsu) in the finals to become the first ever Queen of Trios. The weekend also produced the documentary CHIKARA: Wrestling Equality, where CHIKARA promoter Mike Quackenbush talks about how their goal is to go beyond mere "girl power" to actual gender equality. The promotion scrapped gender boundaries back in 2003.
  • At The Eleventh Hour, May 6, 2017, Solo Darling eliminated The Whisper to win the third Infinite Gauntlet match, which is CHIKARA's version of the Royal Rumble.
• At KBB Civil War Elimination, March 31, 2017, Su Yung and Hell Monkey won the KBB Double Danger Tandem Titles, making Su the second regular wrestler, after Kota Ibushi, who held the KBB Hashtag Title for less than a day, and the first woman to hold a KBB Title, and she won it on the last day of Women's History Month.
• Tessa Blanchard was the only woman to hold the EWA Heavyweight Title and the EWA Florida Heavyweight Title. The EWA Heavyweight Title was also held by legends including Ricky Morton, The Barbarian, Ivan Koloff, Jake "The Snake" Roberts, Buddy Landel and Jimmy Valiant. The EWA Florida Heavyweight Title was also held by Blackjack Mulligan. Her match with Sami Callihan at Impact Wrestling Slammiversary XVII was the first intergender match to main event a national PPV. She didn't win that one, but, she has that place in history.

Video Games

• In Sleeping Dogs (2012), "Broken Nose" Jiang became the only female Red Pole in the Sun On Yee. She didn't so much prove herself to her male rivals as kill enough of them that they stopped arguing (which is a kind of proof, true).
• In Mass Effect, Commander Shepard becomes the first human Spectre. Since the Spectres are considered the sharp end of the Citadel Council's authority, and the Council is basically the center of the political world, humanity had been pushing for a presence in the Spectres for some time (and had prepared Shepard as a likely candidate).
• Episode 3 of The Lion's Song is all about Emma's trials and tribulations as a female mathematician. At the beginning of the episode she is laughed out of the Radius, an all-male society for mathematicians, when she attempts to present her theory, forcing her to take on the identity of Emil Schell. At the end, she attains fame after debating Zahler, who is Driven by Envy over Emma/Emil's achievements, about her thesis and starts teaching at a university under her assigned gender at birth.

Webcomics

• In Lady Knight, Aurora is the first woman to be admitted into the Knights Academy.

Web Video

• Discussed to the frustration of the Willy Wonka expy that Rekha is playing in the CollegeHumor sketch Stop Asking Women To Talk About Being A Woman as she just wants to answer some fun questions about how whimsical she is and how fun her products are, but the journalist will only ask her serious questions about her struggles as a woman who managed to succeed in a male-dominated industry, and turn her every attempt to redirect the topic to how fun she and her candies are into a critique about society.

Western Animation

• An episode of Futurama has Leela become the first female pitcher in the professional blernsball league - but she's not actually any good at it, having been included because someone thought it would be funny. However, her poor performance has the unexpected effect of encouraging other women to get into the game, because they don't want her to be the last word on women in the sport.
• In Jane and the Dragon, the title character is in training to become the kingdom's first female knight (having won the right to train as a squire by rescuing a prince from a dragon).
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: After fighting an Old Master for the right, Katara becomes the first woman that the Northern Water Tribe trains in combat waterbending; until then, women were limited to being healers. This is news to Katara, who is from the Southern Water Tribe and is disgusted by the North's sexism.
• In The Legend of Korra, Suyin calls Korra the first Avatar to learn metalbending. Not exactly a huge accomplishment, given that metalbending was invented seven decades prior and it's a sufficiently common skill among earthbenders that there's an entire city of them, but neither her predecessor Aang or the countless Avatars before them knew it was possible — metalbending was only invented toward the end of Aang's quest by Toph Bei Fong, an incredibly gifted earthbender.
• Parodied in Animaniacs (2020)'s first song, "The Catch-Up Song" when mentioning the Presidents since Bill Clinton.
  Yakko: (singing) [...]Obama brought hope/so Clinton thought "Dope!"/"2016 should be a real breeze!"
  Dot: So, Hillary finally broke that glass ceiling?
  Yakko: No, but it certainly feels like shards of glass falling all around us. (cue Yakko pulling out an umbrella as we see Hillary and other women in rocket shoes smashing a literal glass ceiling with hammers.)
• Discussed and ultimately Deconstructed in Sonic Boom, when Knuckles, who is a self-admitted "meathead", brings up the fact that acknowledging that there's even a glass ceiling in the first place undermines gender equality by saying the one who supposedly broke the ceiling is the exception and not the rule.
  Knuckles: You know, Amy, anytime someone calls attention to the breaking of gender roles, it ultimately undermines the concept of gender equality by implying that this is an exception and not the status quo. (Sonic, Amy, Sticks and Tails are stunned silent) What? Just because I'm a meathead doesn't mean I'm not a feminist.
• In Santa Inc., the protagonist Candy is a Christmas Elf attempting to become the first female Santa. Near the end of the series, the current Santa ends up choosing his Fat Idiot intern on the basis that while Candy has all of the business and management skills necessary, she's a Child Hater in a job where being beloved by children is a critical skill (a skill that the intern actually has) and instead offers to grant her behind-the-scenes power while the intern becomes the face of the company. Candy proceeds to tell Santa to go fuck himself.

Real Life

• Wikipedia has some lists: List of women's firsts, for example.

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