For over three decades, Women’s History Month has been celebrated annually for the entire month of March. However, that hasn’t always been the case…
Before there were “days” for everything, on March 19, 1911, the first-ever International Women’s Day was held with celebrations done by more than a million people. Soon after, the world agreed to make the day March 8th, still in place today, but the United Nations didn’t recognize it as such until 1975.
Soon after that, in the United States, advocation for an official week-long commemoration of women’s history began because of the frustration that many textbooks and curriculums almost exclusively spoke of men’s stories. In 1978, California educators started a week-long movement, during which was International Women’s Day, to change these issues. This important movement eventually made it to the current president of the time, Jimmy Carter, who issued an official proclamation to mark March 2-8, 1980 as Women’s History Week. He stated, “… Men and women have worked together to build this nation… Too often the women were unsung and sometimes their contributions went unnoticed.” An annual proclamation was also issued by President Reagan from 1982-1986 for that week. And, by 1986, 14 states had recognized the entire month of March as Women’s History Month.
And, in March 1987, Women’s History Month was made official!
However, as an article from The Red and Black states, “The idea behind these events is good. We should take time to recognize the experiences of disadvantaged groups. But we also shouldn’t limit ourselves to doing so for one month. We need to include broader perspectives in how we study history throughout the year.” I, for one, completely agree. We 100% need to be including marginalized groups in our curriculums, history, textbooks, and teachings all of the time.
A month to celebrate these contributions is an excellent start, but it’s just that – a start.
The fact that we need a month to force teachers and schools to teach our history means we aren’t doing enough for the rest of the year. It just shows that we are failing to celebrate our history when it isn’t thrown in our face. I purposely use the word “history” here to remind us that women in history aren’t making “additions” or “helping” the contributions of men – they are history. As the famous saying goes…
“Every great man has a woman behind him… And every great woman has some man or other in front of her, tripping her up.”
Dorothy L. Sayers
Plus, how many of your teachers do you remember either blatantly refused to do anything for Women’s, or Black, History Month or only did something for that specific month?
I vividly remember my 7th-grade science teacher telling us on March 8th (it was a Tuesday, I believe) that this was going to be the one lesson that we would talk about all the women that have advanced science. There isn’t enough time in a less than 40-minute class to talk about the hundreds of women throughout all of history that have advanced science. She was out of her mind, for sure. She talked about maybe three different women in science (I only remember Marie Curie and Jane Goodall) for maybe ten minutes. Then, she moved on to another old, white man that, I know for a fact stole the work of a woman and claimed it as his own, but, of course, she didn’t mention that to us.
Now, this is one of the more extreme examples from my school in the middle of, what I refer to as, “Hicksville” in northeastern Pennsylvania. Yet, I have dozens of other personal stories of similar things that happened and even more from my friends that came from “more liberal” or “good” areas.
We should be focusing on incorporating diverse and intersectional voices of history into all of history. By doing so, we can begin to address the plethora of underlying problems of how we are currently learning history and how we see the world.
Am I glad Women’s History Month exists? Yes, of course. But, do I think we need to do more consistently throughout the year? Yes, of course. We desperately need to recognize these leaders, experiences, and history all year, not just when the world is begging us to talk about it.