No one expects 2013 to be easy, but we'll take our kicks where we can, and only a week in, there are already cultural triumphs for women to celebrate. The band Haim, three sisters from California, stormed to the top of the BBC's Sound of 2013 list, and for the first time all five categories of the Costa prize were won by women. The frontrunner to take the overall prize on 29 January is Hilary Mantel, with her novel Bring Up the Bodies, but Mary and Bryan Talbot's graphic memoir, Dotter of Her Father's Eyes, has also been highly lauded.

There are plenty of other books to look forward to, including Bedsit Disco Queen by Tracey Thorn (Virago, February), Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfeld, (Doubleday, June), a memoir from Anjelica Huston (Simon and Schuster, October), and a couple of books by Guardian writers, Be Awesome: Modern Life for Modern Ladies by Hadley Freeman (Fourth Estate, April), and She Left Me the Gun: My Mother's Life Before Me by Emma Brockes (Faber and Faber, April). We can't wait to hear what some of those other Sound of 2013 nominees, including Savages, Angel Haze and Laura Mvula go on to produce, and in cinema, it'll be interesting to see Diablo Cody's as yet untitled directorial debut. On TV we're excited about My Mad Fat Diary, which starts on E4 on 14 January – starring Sharon Rooney as a troubled teenager growing up in the 1990s – and Top of the Lake, a crime mystery starring Elisabeth Moss and Holly Hunter, directed and co-written by Jane Campion.

In the art world, in April, Tate Modern will stage the first UK exhibition of the work of Lebanese artist Saloua Raouda Choucair, one of the great pioneers of abstract art in the Middle East, and, in September, the gallery will stage the first full survey of the work of Mira Schendel, one of Latin America's most important postwar artists. Along with all this, there are annual events to plan for, including the Women of the World festival on London's Southbank, which runs from 8-10 March and will hopefully build on last year's stellar lineup, which included Shami Chakrabarti and Camila Batmanghelidjh, and the Million Women Rise march against violence, which takes place in London on Saturday 9 March.

Many of 2013's events haven't yet been pinned down to a specific date, so this list is necessarily winter/spring-heavy, but here are details of just a few we are already marking in our calendars:

Just started: Borgen, series two, BBC4

Starring the fabulous Sidse Babett Knudsen as Birgitte Nyborg, Danish prime minister, the first series was one of the best ever depictions of a woman negotiating the pressures of life at the top of politics – both personal and professional. With Katrine and Hanne rounding out the trio of excellent, complicated female characters at the heart of the show, the new series should be a treat.

14 January: Stand up for women, Bloomsbury Theatre, London

Self-styled Bad Boy of Feminism James Mullinger, hosts a night of comedy in support of women's charity Eaves. The lineup includes Shappi Khorsandi, Isy Suttie, Shazia Mirza and Holly Walsh; expect tickets to sell out fast.

17-27 January: Sundance film festival, Park City, Utah

In what appears to be a record, half of the 16 entries competing for best dramatic film at Sundance this year are directed by women, suggesting that, in the indie world at least, female film-makers are enjoying a breakthrough. And while the numbers of women in documentary film-making have typically been more robust anyway, it's great to see an even gender split in the documentary competition too.

Of the films in contention, ones to watch out for include Lynn Shelton's Touchy Feely (the story of a massage therapist who develops an aversion to bodily contact), and Martha Shane and Lana Wilson's After Tiller, a documentary profiling four US doctors who continue to conduct late-term abortions, despite the murder of their colleague Dr George Tiller, by anti-abortion activists.

24 January: How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti, published by Harvill Secker

Subtitled "A novel from life", this finds Heti, a writer from Toronto in her mid-30s, blending fiction and autobiography to explore the title question. The book has been compared to Lena Dunham's Girls (the second series of which starts on Sky Atlantic on 14 January) and they do seem part of a growing movement to explore the messiness, self-consciousness and doubt of young women who have been told the world offers them unprecedented opportunity, and who are discovering just what that means.

28 January: 200 years since the publication of Pride and Prejudice

There will be a conference to celebrate the book at Lucy Cavendish College in Cambridge in June, and Jane Austen's House Museum in Hampshire is holding events throughout the year, including an exhibition, writing workshops and a reading relay in May – when the entire book will be read aloud.

8 February-3 May: Sylvia Sleigh exhibition, Tate Liverpool

Born in Wales, trained in Brighton, then based in New York until her death in 2010, Sleigh was an integral part of the feminist art movement, and this is her first UK retrospective. She became well known in the 1970s for paintings that echoed traditional portraiture, but replaced female nudes with male ones; in 1973, for example, she painted The Turkish Bath, which alludes to Ingres's 1862 painting of the same name. Explaining her work, she once said her aim was to portray "both sexes with dignity and humanism".

14 February: One Billion Rising

Spearheaded by playwright and founder of the V-Day movement Eve Ensler, One Billion Rising aims to get people all over the world to join a global strike to demand an end to violence – and they'd like that strike to involve dancing. "One in three women on the planet will be raped or beaten in her lifetime," says the website, "One billion women violated is an atrocity. One billion women dancing is a revolution." Events are in the pipeline everywhere from Belfast to Brighton to the Isle of Bute.

28 March: Fifty Shades of Feminism, published by Virago

In 1963, Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, uncovering the frustration of a generation of US women, and helping to start the second-wave feminist movement that soared in the 1970s. Fifty years on, this collection, edited by Lisa Appignanesi, Susie Orbach and Rachel Holmes, features fifty women writing about feminism, including the editors themselves, and Tahmima Anam, Bidisha, Linda Grant, Kate Mosse, Ahdaf Soueif and Natasha Walter. Expect pithy, surprising, challenging insights into life for modern women.

11 April: Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, published by Fourth Estate

Adichie's last novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, won the Orange prize; seven years on, Americanah is being tipped as one of the books of the year. The story of Nigerian teenagers Ifemelu and Obinze who fall in love, and then each leave the country – her travelling to the US, him to the UK – it has been described by author Colum McCann as a "keenly observed examination of race, identity and belonging".

19 April: Wadjda, directed and written by Haifaa al-Mansour

The first full-length film ever to have been shot entirely in Saudi Arabia, the title character of Wadjda is a girl who yearns to own a bicycle, so she can race against a neighbourhood boy. Unfortunately, the restrictions on women and girls in the Kingdom make this goal seem unlikely – and they made it tricky, at times, for Mansour to direct her film. She has spoken of having to direct some of the exterior scenes from inside a van because it would have been unacceptable for her to be on the street in more conservative districts. Wadjda has nonetheless won excellent reviews and a raft of awards.

June: 100 years since the death of suffragette Emily Wilding Davison

On 4 June 1913, Emily Wilding Davison stepped in front of King George V's horse during the Epsom Derby, and died of her injuries four days later. It was probably the most startling event of the suffragette campaign, which had already seen many activists, including Davison herself, imprisoned and force-fed. A campaign is under way for her death to be remembered with a minute's silence at this year's derby, with supporters including Dr Helen Pankhurst, the granddaughter of suffragette leader Sylvia.

7 September-16 November: Much Ado About Nothing, The Old Vic

Vanessa Redgrave has never played Beatrice before, and now in her mid-70s she'll take the stage opposite James Earl Jones, who appears as her sparring partner, Benedick. Directed by Mark Rylance, this is just one highlight of a strong Old Vic season that also includes Kim Cattrall starring in Sweet Bird of Youth, directed by Marianne Elliott.

What events starring or produced by brilliant women have we missed? Tell us about those you're looking forward to in the coming year.