Thanks for your question. The first woman in space was Valentina Tereshkova. She flew on Vostok 6 in 1963 and spent almost 3 days in orbit. The main purpose of the flight was to look for differences in physiology between men and women during spaceflight, and to communicate with a second orbiting vehicle, Vostok 5 flown by Valeri Bykovsky.

You can read all about her mission on this page. It's part of an excellent website called Encyclopedia Astronautica, which has detailed information on just about every spaceflight ever.

Neil Saunders