Gender in speculative fiction
The first known female superhero is writer-artist Fletcher Hanks's minor character Fantomah, an ageless, ancient Egyptian woman in the modern day who could transform into a skull-faced creature with superpowers to fight evil; she debuted in 1940 in Fiction Houses "Jungle Comics".
Vixen (comics)
Vixen was intended to be the first African female DC superhero to star in her own series, but the first issue of her series was cancelled in the DC Implosion in 1978, never to be released. The story was subsequently printed in "Cancelled Comic Cavalcade".