The Story Behind the History | Women’s History Month
Every year, we celebrate Women’s History Month as a social exercise to honor the accomplishments women have conquered throughout History. A lot of us though don't know the story behind this commemoration. As an effort to demonstrate how we've gotten this far in society regarding the women's right to vote, for instance. Here's a brief timeline of events that illustrates how Women's History Month came to life.
In 1975, the Commission on the Status of Women was founded in the County of Sonoma, California. Back then, they realized the lack of knowledge regarding the history of women in schools and within the community. With the purpose of educating the youth about important victories of women in the history of the United States, they put together several events about women's history in order to educate young students. To that end, an educational task force of the county of Sonoma created a celebration they called "Women's History Week" as a measure to increase awareness about women's history in 1978.
The following year, Molly Murphy MacGregor, one of the co-founders of the National Women's History Project (known nowadays as National Women's History Alliance), was invited to participate in The Women's History Institute at Sarah Lawrence College, which had one of its chairs occupied by Gerda Lerner, a notorious historian and feminist author who participated in the development of degree programs in women's history. During the event, when the participants learned about how successful the event the county of Sonoma hosted was, they decided to create a similar celebration within their schools and communities. Therefore, they agreed to pursue the consolidation of a "National Women's History Week". Their efforts came to a promising outcome, President Carter issued the first presidential proclamation declaring the Week of March, 8th of 1980 as National Women's History Week in 1980.
From that moment on, State departments of education across the country encouraged the celebration of Women's History Week as effective measures to achieve fairness goals in classrooms and within society. Each year though, the dates of celebration would change and new efforts would be required to secure the national celebratory week for women. A few years later, in 1986, about fourteen states in America declared March as Women's History Month. The following year, the Congress declared March as National Women's History Month permanently.
Since then, institutions all over the country have committed to enhance awareness around the history of women who fought to make this accomplishment come true. The AWHI, which stands for Smithsonian American Women's History Institute, has put together an effort to amplify the historical archive of the deeds American women have conquered. Their goal is to acknowledge and also disseminate their stories and victories in order to honor these women and also empower other citizens.
An interesting fact about the National Women's History Month is that, every year, the non-profit organization NWHA, which stands for National Women's History Alliance, chooses a theme. For 2020, they declared the theme will be "Valiant Women of the Vote", that honors women who have fought for the right to vote in the United States. In times where the world seems to simultaneously experience a wave of conservative leaderships in politics, it's crucial to learn the history of women who shaped the world we live in.
In History, from time to time, many accomplishments women conquered haven't been told yet. Their trajectory, battles and concessions to make this country a better place to live. They dedicated their lives to their own generation and to the future ones and, as an outcome, we can learn which role we'll play in society by acknowledging History, and not in spite of it.
Sources:
https://sonomacounty.ca.gov/Commission-on-Status-of-Women/History/
https://womenshistorymonth.gov
https://www.unwomen.org/en/csw
https://nationalwomenshistoryalliance.org
https://www.loc.gov/exhibitions/women-fight-for-the-vote/about-this-exhibition/#explore-the-exhibit