The First Woman Series - Awards

At Girls Buzz, we buzz, support, and celebrate every woman we know. But this one is special applause for all the wonderful ladies who were the first in their fields to break the barriers and accomplish something extraordinary. We are going to sing laurels of ladies who were the first woman award winners in India of their respective disciplines.

1. First Woman to get Padma Shri Award

Source: Frankensaurus

Asha Devi Aryanayakam was an Indian freedom activist, educator, and Gandhian who lived from 1901 to 1972. She was significantly linked with Mahatma Gandhi's Sevagram[4] and Vinoba Bhave's Bhoodan movement. In 1954, the Indian government honored her with the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award in India, for her contributions to society, making her one of the first recipients of the award.

2. First Woman to get Arjuna Award

Ann Lumsden, who was born in Bengal, was a skilled goalkeeper. She was a member of the 1956 Indian squad that visited Australia. She was instrumental in India's victories over Sri Lanka at home in 1960 and on a visit to the country in 1962. On the Sri Lanka tour, India won all of the matches in which Ann Lumsden was the leading scorer. She is the first female hockey player to win an Arjuna Award, which was established in 1961.

3. First Woman to get Jnanpith Award

Source: Indianetzone

The first woman who got first Jnanpith Award was Ashapurna Devi. Ashapurna Devi, sometimes known as Ashapoorna Devi or Ashapurna Debi, was a notable Bengali author and poet who lived from January 8, 1909, to July 12, 1995. The Government of India gave her the Jnanpith Award and Padma Shri in 1976, as well as D.Litt. degrees from the Universities of Jabalpur, Rabindra Bharati, Burdwan, and Jadavpur. In 1989, Vishwa Bharati University bestowed the title of Deshikottama upon her. In 1994, the Sahitya Akademi bestowed its highest distinction, the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship, on her for her contributions as a novelist and short-story writer.

4. First Woman to get Booker Prize

Source: The New York Times

The first woman booker prize winner in India is Arundhati Roy. In 1997, she became the first Indian woman to receive the Man Booker Prize." The God of Small Things," a soaring novel about a set of twins attempting to make sense of the world, themselves, and their unusual and difficult family in southern India, won Arundhati Roy England's renowned Booker Prize.

5. First Woman to get Nobel Prize

Source: Quora

The first woman to win Nobel Award in India was Mother Teressa. Mother Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu (26 August 1910 – 5 September 1997) was an Albanian-Indian Roman Catholic nun and missionary who was canonised as Saint Teresa of Calcutta by the Catholic Church. She was born in Skopje (today the capital of North Macedonia), which was then part of the Ottoman Empire's Kosovo Vilayet. After eighteen years in Skopje, she traveled to Ireland and eventually to India, where she spent the rest of her life. In 1950, she started the charity missionaries. Teresa received numerous awards, including the Ramon Magsaysay Peace Prize in 1962 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.

6. First Woman to get Bharat Ratna

Source: Encyclopedia Britannica

Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi (November 19, 1917 – October 31, 1984) was an Indian politician and a key role in the Indian National Congress. She was India's third prime minister and the country's first and only female prime minister to date. Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, had a daughter named Gandhi. She was Prime Minister of India twice, from January 1966 to March 1977 and again from January 1980 to October 1984, giving her the second longest-serving Indian Prime Minister behind her father. Gandhi's political intransigence and unparalleled centralization of power earned her the title of Prime Minister and Bharat Ratna.

7. First Woman to get Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award

Source: The Times of India

Our female athletes have received 17 of the 45 Khel Ratnas that have been granted. Karnam Malleswari was the first woman athlete winner to win the prestigious honor. In the 54 kg division, Malleswari won the world title in 1994 and 1995 and finished third in 1993 and 1996. She placed second at the World Championships in Istanbul in 1994 and first in the Asian Weightlifting Championships in Korea in 1995. That year, she won the World Championships in China with a world record lift of 113 kg. Malleswari was a two-time weightlifting world champion with 29 international medals, including 11 gold medals, prior to her Olympic victory.

8. First Woman to get Ashok Chakra

Source: Twitter 

Neerja Bhanot, a flight attendant, was the youngest and first woman to receive the Ashoka Chakra, India's highest peacetime gallantry honor. On September 5, 1986, Neerja, then 23 years old, died while attempting to defend passengers on board PanAm Flight 73 from terrorists. She was posthumously awarded the honor.

9. First woman to get Sahitya Academy Award

Source: Kavishala

Amrita Pritam was born into a Sikh household in Gujranwala, Punjab (now Pakistan) on August 31, 1919, as the only child of a schoolteacher and a poet. Over 100 books of poetry, novels, biographies, essays, a collection of Punjabi folk songs, and an autobiography were published by the premier 20th-century Punjabi poet, and they were translated into various Indian and international languages. Pritam frequently wrote about the plight of Indian women, and her writings represented their oppression and neglect in Indian society. For 'Kagaj te Canvas,' she received the Jnanpith, India's highest literary honor, in 1981. (Paper and Canvas). Amrita Pritam won the Sahitya Akademi Award for her long poem 'Sunehade' in 1956, making her the first woman to do so.