On Women's History Month

As the month of March closes, it is a good time to reflect on women’s history as a whole. I am always amazed at how relatively young the women’s rights movement is, and how relevant it remains today.

Think about society in the Victorian era and its restrictions of women: divorce was illegal; women held no legal rights and no rights over their children. How radical Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were to protest and organize the way that they did—all in order to have an official voice through voting! Alice Paul continued the radical vein in the early 1900s, engaging in civil disobedience and publicly calling President Woodrow Wilson “Kaiser” Wilson—a reference to Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II, who did not support self-government of his people. Finally, women won the right to vote in 1920.

Did the suffragists see all their dreams come true? No. The women’s movement as a whole dithered after women won the right to vote. In the 1970s, women again organized with the onset of the feminist movement. In the early 1980s, in an effort to publicly support women, Congress designated a Women’s History Week. By the end of the decade, March was designated as Women’s History Month.

This month, through social media, I have seen fantastic posts by the National Museum of American History on the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City, which killed 146 immigrant women workers; PBS coverage of “Rosie the Riveters” being honored in Washington, D.C., for their work during World War II; a fascinating biography of Air Force flight nurse Captain Lillian Keil, published by the National Cemetery Administration of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and more. We have come so far to recognize women, and yet there is so much work left for us. Fortunately, organizations like the New-York Historical Society are putting their resources into recognizing women: the Center for the Study of Women’s History at the society will open in early 2017.

I am looking forward to seeing what 2020 brings us in terms of commemorations of the Nineteenth Amendment. What efforts have you noticed that have successfully commemorated women, or that are being planned? I’d love to hear your thoughts.