The Women's Centennial Congress was organized by Carrie Chapman Catt

Carrie Chapman Catt

Carrie Chapman Catt was a women's suffrage leader who campaigned for the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution which gave U.S. women the right to vote in 1920...

 and held at the Astor Hotel

Astor Hotel

The Hotel Astor was a hotel located in the Times Square area of Manhattan, in operation from 1904 through 1967. The former site of the hotel, the block bounded by Broadway, Astor Plaza, West 44th Street, and West 45th Street, is now occupied by the high-rise 54-story office tower One Astor Plaza.-...

 on November 25-27, 1940 to celebrate a century of female progress. The date was 100 years after the first World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840, where women were forbidden from speaking or voting. This event was a catalyst for later efforts in the sufferage movement, especially the Seneca Falls Convention

Seneca Falls Convention

The Seneca Falls Convention was an early and influential women's rights convention held in Seneca Falls, New York, July 19–20, 1848. It was organized by local New York women upon the occasion of a visit by Boston-based Lucretia Mott, a Quaker famous for her speaking ability, a skill rarely...

. At the Women's Centennial Congress, 100 successful women, most notably Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and became an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an international...

, were selected to represent female progress in numerous fields.