By Mona AlvaradoFrazier /Guest contributor
Since 1911 in Europe, March 8 is the day to celebrate International Women’s Day. In 1978 in California, the Education Task Force of the Sonoma County Commission on the Status of Women began a “Women’s History Week” celebration. This week coincided with International Women’s Day.
In 1980, Molly Murphy MacGregor, Mary Ruthsdotter, Maria Cuevas, Paula Hammett and Bette Morgan founded the National Women’s History Project (NWHP) in Santa Rosa, California. The NWHP led a coalition that successfully lobbied Congress to designate March as National Women’s History Month. They wanted to ensure that the celebration of women’s history would include a multicultural perspective, an international connection between and among all women. Multicultural American women are overlooked in most mainstream approaches to U.S. history, so the NWHP champions their accomplishments and leads the drive to write women back into history.
In 1987, Congress expanded the week to a month. That’s seven years of hard work to bring this issue into classrooms, conference rooms, and other venues around the USA. The theme of 2012 Women’s History Month is “Women’s Education-Women’s Empowerment.”
The purpose of Women’s History Month is to increase consciousness and knowledge of women’s history: to take one month of the year to remember the contributions of notable and ordinary women, in hopes that the day will soon come when it’s impossible to teach or learn history without remembering these contributions. This quote sums up the reason why acknowledging women’s contributions are important:
Each time a girl opens a book and reads a womanless history, she learns she is worth less. – Myra Pollack Sadker
Recognizing the achievements of women in all facets of life – science, community, government, literature, art, sports, medicine – has a huge impact on the development of self-respect and new opportunities for girls and young women.
In our own personal lives, the NWHP encourages discovering stories about our mothers, grandmothers and great grandmothers to help us better understand their lives, the challenges they faced, and ultimately, ourselves and our own times. Recognizing the dignity and accomplishments of women in our own families and those from other backgrounds leads to higher self-esteem among girls and greater respect among boys and men.
I hope your children have WHM events in their schools. Take a few minutes to talk with them about what they’ve learned about women’s contributions. And sometime this month, sit down and tell them your own stories, your mother’s stories, or her mother’s stories. Let them hear about adversities, their values, and the triumphs of women who are important to them every day not just one month out of the year.
For a more in-depth look into women’s history, particularly women of color, stop by my blog at: www.latinapen.blogspot.com
— Mona AlvaradoFrazier is a writer and proprietor the BookNook in Downtown Sol, 328 W. Third St., Oxnard. To see more of her work, visit www.latinapen.blogspot.com