Women's History Month

Laura Briggs

After almost three decades of activism to promote women’s history in schools and communities, the National Women’s History Project (NWHP) is experiencing serious budget shortfalls and staff cutbacks. Ironically, it is their success that is hurting them—the widespread celebration of Women’s History Month has turned it into a niche market. Where once NWHP was the primary source for posters and curricular materials, now many commercial websites compete to “sell” Women’s History Month.

NWHP has asked the OAH’s Committee on the Status of Women in the Historical Profession to urge professional historians to support it, by reminding OAH members of the crucial role NWHP has played in the founding of community celebrations of women’s history in March and including a consciousness of race and multiculturalism in the celebration. NWHP would like to encourage those who teach (or know teachers) at the K-12 level and in higher education to buy posters and other materials directly from NWHP, and even consider a direct donation (at http://www.nwhp.org).

This year, the NWHP will be cohosting a Women’s Arts Weekend with A.I.R. gallery, the oldest women’s gallery in the country, in conjunction with the OAH Annual Meeting in New York City in honor of this year’s Women’s History Month theme, “Women’s Art, Women’s Vision.” The events will begin on Friday, March 28, at the Puck Building in New York City with a High Tea to honor the 2008 honorees to be followed by a dinner honoring New York’s women’s art community. On Saturday, March 29, there will be a bus tour to the Brooklyn Museum to view a mounting of Judy Chicago’s pathbreaking exhibit, The Dinner Party. More information about cost, package deals, and registration is available on their website.

Molly Murphy MacGregor, the executive director of the National Women’s History Project and one of its founders, argues that despite considerable victories in changing the representations of women in the teaching of history, in this era of Brittany Spears and the ascendancy of a pop culture world where women are valued above all for their appearance, girls and young women need women’s history more than ever. “Words like ‘self-esteem’ and ‘role model’ may seem to be over used until we read the journals and biographies of girls and women,” she says. “In a world that continues to define women by the way we look, having a variety of role models who have successfully challenged cultural assumptions is critical. The unrelenting courage to believe in ourselves is the essence of women’s history.”

In the 1960s, an upstart group of young (and not-so-young) scholars began to teach—and research—women’s history. Emerging out of the impulse to do “history from below,” Women’s history was closely tied to the emerging Women’s Liberation Movement and other social movements, addressing a need to give something as outlandish as a movement for women a past, and inspiration for a different kind of future for women and girls. Initially, women’s history was taken up at least as much outside of higher education as within it. In 1978, the Education Task Force of the Sonoma County (California) Commission on the Status of Women initiated a “Women’s History Week” celebration, choosing the week of March 8 to coincide with International Women’s Day, that early twentieth-century Socialist day of protest to mark the oppression of women.

The celebration of Women’s History Week was a success, and other schools began to host their own Women’s History Week programs. In 1979, leaders from the California group shared their project at a Women’s History Institute at Sarah Lawrence College. Other participants not only became determined to begin their own local Women’s History Week projects but also agreed to support an effort to organize national Women’s History Week. Thus, in 1980, a small group of women led a coalition—called the National Women’s History Project—to lobby Congress on behalf of the project. The grassroots group launched a study of school textbooks, and found that less than three percent of the content was devoted to women.

In 1981, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Rep. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) cosponsored the first Joint Congressional Resolution proclaiming “Women’s History Week.” In 1987, the National Women’s History Project petitioned Congress to expand the celebration to the entire month of March. Since then, the National Women’s History Month Resolution has been approved every year with bipartisan support in both the House and Senate.

In the subsequent two decades, the National Women’s History Project (NWHP) has become a national organization and clearinghouse, working with schools, colleges, companies, churches, clubs, communities, government offices, unions, publishers, and the media. Every year, NWHP sends out 100,000 catalogs and distributes tens of thousands of women’s history posters, celebratory materials, books, videos, and curriculum resources. In 1997, the group put up their award-winning website, <http://www.nwhp.org>, that provides access to countless resources, including biographies, a timeline and history of the women’s movement, women’s speeches online, and a directory of speakers and performers. NWHP also unifies the annual celebration through the selection of its theme.