Happy Women’s History Month 2021! As we’re reminded this month of all the incredible strides that women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony have taken to ensure our equality, you might be wondering why we’ve selected the month of March to celebrate. I mean, women do historical things every day, so what makes this month the time to recognize that?
Well, we can trace it back to 1911. National Women’s History Month actually didn’t start out as a month at all! You might notice that in addition to being National Women’s History Month, the month of March also hosts International Women’s Day on the 8th. This was informally observed up until 1977, when the United Nations officially recognized it as a national holiday. In 1978, local feminist groups started celebrating Women’s History Week (also on the week of March 8th), and the school district of Sonoma, California held the largest known demonstration for this event.
President Jimmy Carter issued a presidential proclamation that officially declared the week of March 8th, 1980 as National Women’s History Week. Many other congressmen and senators, seeing the popularity of the week’s events, continued to pass resolutions in subsequent years that designated that second week of March as Women’s History Week. Schools across the nation began to incorporate Women’s History Week into lessons and events, and by 1986, over 10 states had recognized the entire month of March as Women’s History Month because there was so much for them to cover that couldn’t be confined to just 7 days.
The rest is history: After the National Women’s History Project petitioned Congress in 1987 to establish the month of March as Women’s History month, every president after that has followed suit and continued the proclamations each year.
Now, Women’s History Month is a way that our nation recognizes important women that have changed the course of history. This not only serves as an educational tool for the masses, but inspires new generations of women to go out and make history themselves! But remember: women do historical things every single day, and if we took the time to give everyone the recognition they deserve, we’d be celebrating Women’s History every month. Which, now that I think about it, might not be such a bad thing. Who knows…maybe that’s coming next!