Who was the first woman to climb Everest?

Junko Tabei (22 September 1939 – 20 October 2016) was a Japanese mountaineer. She was the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest, and the first woman to ascend all Seven Summits by climbing the highest peak on every continent.

Tabei's LCC contained a team known as the Japanese Women's Everest Expedition (JWEE), headed by Eiko Hisano, that would attempt to summit Mount Everest. JWEE contained 15 members, mostly working women, including teachers, a computer programmer and a juvenile counselor.

Tabei helped to find sponsors for the expedition, although she was frequently told that the women "should be raising children instead." She was able to obtain last-minute funding from the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper and Nippon Television, however all the group members still had to pay an amount that was almost equal to Japan’s average salary.

After a long training period, the team began the expedition early in 1975 when they traveled to Kathmandu. They used the same route to ascend the mountain that Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay had taken in 1953. In early May the group were camping at 6,300 meters when an avalanche struck their camp. The women and their guides were buried under the snow. Tabei lost consciousness for approximately six minutes until her sherpa guide dug her out. Twelve days after the avalanche, on 16 May 1975, with her sherpa guide, Ang Tsering, Tabei became the first woman to reach the summit of Everest.