List of female United States Cabinet Secretaries

The United States Cabinet has had 31 female officers. 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.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 in 1953. This department was subdivided into the departments of Education and Health and Human Services in 1979.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.

Former North Carolina Senator Elizabeth Dole is the first woman to have served in two different Cabinet positions in two different administrations. She was appointed by President Ronald Reagan as Secretary of Transportation in 1983, and was the Secretary of Labor during the tenure of George H. W. Bush—Reagan's successor.Czechoslovakia-born Madeleine Albright became the first foreign-born woman to serve in the Cabinet when she was appointed Secretary of State in 1997. Her appointment also made her the highest-ranking female Cabinet member at that time.Condoleezza Rice was appointed Secretary of State in 2005, and thus became the highest-ranking woman in the United States presidential line of succession in history. In 2006, Nancy Pelosi replaced Rice as the highest-ranking woman in line when she was elected Speaker of the House.