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Women’s History Month had its origins as a national celebration in 1981 when Congress passed Pub. L. 97-28 which authorized and requested the President to proclaim the week beginning March 7, 1982 as “Women’s History Week.” Throughout the next five years, Congress continued to pass joint resolutions designating a week in March as “Women’s History Week.” In 1987 after being petitioned by the National Women’s History Project, Congress passed Pub. L. 100-9 which designated the month of March 1987 as “Women’s History Month.” Between 1988 and 1994, Congress passed additional resolutions requesting and authorizing the President to proclaim March of each year as Women’s History Month. Since 1995, presidents have issued a series of annual proclamations designating the month of March as “Women’s History Month.” These proclamations celebrate the contributions women have made to the United States and recognize the specific achievements women have made over the course of American history in a variety of fields.
"Women's History Month." https://womenshistorymonth.gov/about
Photo Credit: AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
Photo Caption: President Barack Obama presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to artist and designer Maya Lin during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House, Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2016, in Washington.
Read more about Maya Lin.
An empowering and intersectional history that centers the stories of African American women across 400+ years, showing how they are-and have always been-instrumental in shaping our country. In centering Black women's stories, two award-winning historians seek both to empower African American women and to show their allies that Black women's unique ability to make their own communities while combatting centuries of oppression is an essential component in our continued resistance to systemic racism and sexism.
At Ganado Mission in the Navajo country of northern Arizona, a group of missionaries and doctors--who cared less about saving souls and more about saving lives-- persuaded the local parents and medicine men to allow them to educate their daughters as nurses. The young women struggled to step into the world of modern medicine, but they knew they might become nurses who could build a bridge between the old ways and the new.
The 1890s was the peak of the American bicycle craze. Despite critics who tried to discourage women from trying this sport, women took to the bike in huge numbers, and mastery of the bicycle became a metaphor for women's mastery over their lives. Women's professional bicycle racing thrived in the United States from 1895 -1902. Female racers drew large crowds. Despite concerted efforts to marginalize the sport and to belittle and objectify the women, these athletes forced turn-of-the-century America to rethink strongly held convictions about female frailty and competitive spirit.
The dramatic, untold stories of the diverse array of women who helped transform the American West. Hard-drinking, hard-living poker players and prostitutes of the new boom towns; wives and mothers traveling two and a half thousand miles across the prairies in covered-wagon convoys; African-American women in search of freedom from slavery; Chinese sex-workers sold openly on the docks of San Francisco; Native American women brutally displaced by the unstoppable tide of white settlers - these were the women who settled the American West, whose stories until now have remained mostly untold.
Our Voices, Our Histories brings together thirty-five Asian American and Pacific Islander authors in a single volume to explore the historical experiences, perspectives, and actions of Asian American and Pacific Islander women in the United States and beyond. The contributions present new research on diverse aspects of Asian American and Pacific Islander women's history, from the politics of language, to the role of food, to experiences as adoptees, mixed race, and second generation, while acknowledging shared experiences as women of color in the United States.
In Recasting the Vote, Cathleen D. Cahill tells the powerful stories of a multiracial group of activists who propelled the national suffrage movement toward a more inclusive vision of equal rights. Cahill reveals a new cast of heroines largely ignored in earlier suffrage histories. With these feminists of color in the foreground, Cahill recasts the suffrage movement as an unfinished struggle that extended beyond the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.
Reshaping Women's History presents autobiographical essays by eighteen accomplished scholar-activists who persevered through poverty or abuse, medical malpractice or family disownment, civil war or genocide. As they illuminate their own unique circumstances, the authors also address issues all-too-familiar to women in the academy: financial instability, the need for mentors, explaining gaps in resumes caused by outside events, and coping with gendered family demands, biases, and expectations.
The Woman's Hour is an inspiring story of activists winning their own freedom in one of the last campaigns forged in the shadow of the Civil War, and the beginning of the great twentieth-century battles for civil rights.
In Their Own Words takes up the writings of eight women pilots as evidence of the ties between the growth of American aviation and the changing role of women. Each of them confronts issues relating to the developing technology and possibilities of aviation. Each speaks to the importance of assimilating aviation into daily life. Each details the part that women might and should play in advancing aviation. Each talks about how aviation may enhance women's participation in contemporary American society, making their works significant documents in the history of American culture.
Being Muslim explores how U.S. Muslim women's identities are expressions of Islam as both Black protest religion and universal faith tradition. Through archival images, cultural texts, popular media, and interviews, the author maps how communities of American Islam became sites of safety, support, spirituality, and social activism, and how women of color were central to their formation.
Ms. Magazine Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can't remember exactly when the feeling took root--that desire to look, to move closer, to touch. Whenever it started growing, it definitely bloomed the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club. Suddenly everything seemed possible. But America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown.
Daunis Fontaine has never quite fit in. She dreams of a fresh start at college, but when family tragedy strikes, Daunis puts her future on hold to look after her fragile mother. The only bright spot is meeting Jamie. Yet even as Daunis falls for Jamie, she senses he is hiding something. Everything comes to light when Daunis witnesses a shocking murder, thrusting her into an FBI investigation. Daunis must learn what it means to be a strong Anishinaabe kwe (Ojibwe woman) and how far she'll go for her community, even if it tears apart the only world she's ever known.
Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking. But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook.
Diana got hurt -- a lot -- and she's decided to deal with this fact by purchasing a life-sized robot boyfriend. Mary and La-La host a podcast about a movie no one's ever seen. Kelly has dragged her friend Beth out of her comfort zone -- and into a day at the fantasy market that neither of them will forget. Girl Town collects the Ignatz Award-winning stories "Radishes" and "Diana's Electric Tongue" together with several other tales of young adulthood and the search for connection.
In this complex and emotionally resonant novel about a Métis girl living on the Canadian prairies, debut author Jen Ferguson serves up a powerful story about rage, secrets, and all the spectrums that make up a person--and the sweetness that can still live alongside the bitterest truth.
For fourteen-year-old budding artist Minoru Ito, her two brothers, her friends, and the other members of the Japanese-American community in southern California, the three months since Pearl Harbor was attacked have become a waking nightmare: attacked, spat on, and abused with no way to retaliate--and now things are about to get worse, their lives forever changed by the mass incarcerations in the relocation camps.
Laura Dean, the most popular girl in high school, was Frederica Riley's dream girl. There's just one problem: Laura Dean is maybe not the greatest girlfriend. Freddy's best friend, Doodle, introduces her to the Seek-Her, a mysterious medium who leaves Freddy some cryptic parting words: Break up with her. But Laura Dean keeps coming back, and as their relationship spirals further out of her control, Freddy has to wonder if it's really Laura Dean that's the problem.
On the corner of American Street and Joy Road, Fabiola Toussaint thought she would finally find une belle vie--a good life. But after they leave Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Fabiola's mother is detained by U.S. immigration, leaving Fabiola to navigate her loud American cousins, Chantal, Donna, and Princess; the grittiness of Detroit's west side; and a surprising romance, all on her own. Just as she finds her footing in this strange new world, a dangerous proposition presents itself, and Fabiola soon realizes that freedom comes at a cost.
African American women played a significant and sometimes overlooked role in the struggle to gain the vote.
At this crucial time when women physicians and nurses are contributing significantly to our community’s health, this documentary provides a look at the challenging and illuminating history of 19th century women doctors. Hidden in American history, all-women’s medical schools began to appear in the mid-19th century long before women had the right to vote or own property.
Journalist Bill Moyers and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg discuss such topics as her experience studying literature with Vladimir Nabakov, her love of the law, her moral compass and belief in justice, and the influences on her. They discuss some of her legal work that had a major impact on law and society, separation of church and state, and the Civil Rights Movement.
Demystified video: Why do women wear pants?
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