Women’s History Month is a time to celebrate the accomplishments of all women throughout history and to empower women across the world. Many countries have a designated month or day depending on their history.
In the United States, Women’s History Month is celebrated in March, along with the United Kingdom and Australia to coincide with International Women’s Day celebrated on March 8.
When and How Did It Start?
International Women’s Day was declared in 1909 by the Socialist Party of America to be the last Sunday of February. In 1914, it was moved to March 8.
The day was created from protests, socialism, and a fight for labor rights. International Women’s Day, IWD, launched in 2001, includes a website that lists events happening for International Women’s Day and history month in general. The website for Women’s History Month also lists events happening to celebrate Women’s History Month and information regarding women’s history including archives on art, projects, and more on influential women throughout history.
Women’s History Month itself started as a national celebration after the passing of Pub. L 97-28 in 1918 that requested the president to state March 7, 1918, as Women’s History Week. Later, in 1978, the National Women’s History Project successfully petitioned for Pub. L 100-9 to be passed designating March as Women’s History Month. There have been presidential proclamations declaring March as Women’s History Month annually since 1995.
The Women’s History Month website states, “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.”
How Far Have We Come?
From modern day to the 1800s and earlier, women have been making strides that deserve to be recognized, starting from women’s suffrage to reaching space and becoming important political figures.
Important events in women’s fight for suffrage include Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I A Woman?” speech in 1851, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony founding the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869, and the passing of the 19th Amendment on Aug. 18, 1920, giving women the right to vote.
Civil rights for women continued with the American Birth Control League being established in 1921 by Margaret Sanger, the first commercially produced birth control pill being approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1960, the Equal Pay Act passing in 1963, Title IX getting signed into law in 1972, the Supreme Court declaring the protections of women’s legal right to an abortion under the constitution in 1973 after the case of Roe V. Wade, the signing of the Violence Against Women’s Act in 1984 giving funding for resources and program that help victims of domestic abuse, sexual assault, and other forms of abuse, and the U.S. military removing the ban against women serving in combat services in 2013.
Women made it onto the political scene in 1917 with Jeannette Rankin being sworn in to the House of Representatives, making her the first woman elected to Congress.
They continued their governmental advancements in many ways, including Sandra Day O’Connor becoming the first woman appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1981, Nancy Pelosi becoming the first female speaker of the House in 2007, Hillary Clinton becoming the first woman to receive a presidential nomination in 2016, and Kamala Harris becoming the first female vice president in 2021.
Other historical achievements of women include Amelia Earhart becoming the first woman and second pilot ever to fly solo across the Atlantic nonstop, Sally Ride becoming the first woman in space in 1983, and Halle Barry becoming the first — and only as of 2022 — African-American woman to have won an Oscar for Best Actress in 2002.
How Far Do We Have to Go?
From the contributions of the women mentioned and many, many more, women have come very far, but they still face inequality and oppression every day. The inequalities range from discrimination in health care, education, and sexual and reproductive health.
Women often are underdiagnosed in many disorders because their pain is downplayed. Such underdiagnoses are especially prevalent in neurodivergency such as ADHD, autism, OCD because women have been socialized to mask their neurodivergent symptoms and there is an underrepresentation of AFAB (assigned female at birth) people in studies on neurodivergent disorders and because of the difference of symptoms between AFAB and AMAB (assigned male at birth) people. Underdiagnosis and treatment are also common with diseases related to female reproductive organs such as endometriosis, cervical cancer and sexually transmitted infections.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, in 2020, there were 30 out of 289 provisions enacted that would restrict access to reproductive health. According to U.N. Women, the United Nations entity for gender equality, women make up about two-thirds of the illiterate population in the world. That is due to the low numbers of women and girls attending schools, typically because of restrictions on girls’ education, low access and barriers to education, or safety issues.
UNICEF, United Nations Children Fund, states that about 129 million girls are out of school. Organizations such as NOW (National Organization for Women), AWN (Autistic Women and Nonbinary Network) and AWID (Association for Women’s Rights in Development) are working to help close the gap in those areas and many more.
Overall, Women’s History Month was established to celebrate the history of women, to empower women, and to acknowledge women’s struggles in an effort to fix such systems of oppression.
