Still a Long Way to Go
Dear Leading Ladies,
March is Women’s History Month.
Another commemorative month we shouldn’t need. Just as we shouldn’t need Black History Month in February, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in April, Pride Month in June, Hispanic Heritage Month in September and October, and Native American Heritage Month in November.
These observances are meant to honor and celebrate the contributions of these groups to the United States. They are meant to build pride within each group and to educate others about the manifold gifts these groups have made to our collective society.
Here’s the problem, however. If we honored all of these people every day, if we were truly inclusive, if their individual and collective contributions were taught in our classrooms, displayed in our museums, given equal standing on our musical and dramatic stages, there would be no need for special months.
Certainly, we have witnessed much positive change in the years since 1980, when President Jimmy Carter proclaimed the week of March 8 National Women’s History Week, and 1987, when Congress designated the month of March as the first Women’s History Month.
For example:
What is notable is that women are taking their places in seats of power. The doors are open now to places like Harvard Medical School which didn’t admit women until 1945, forcing talented and ambitious women to attend less-equipped medical schools exclusively for women, or to study abroad, as Boston surgeon Susan Dimock did from 1867–1871 in Zurich. The doors opened to women two decades later at Harvard Business School, in 1963, a sign of the business world’s reluctance to see women within their club.
Credit: National Archives
Even with all our advances, the struggle isn’t over. While more than a third of the world’s countries, including Germany, Norway, France, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Italy, India, Mexico and the United Kingdom, have had women leaders, the United States has not. We had a woman as vice president and a couple of serious candidates, but we have yet to elevate a woman to the presidency.
Why? Is sexism so embedded into our identity that we can’t get past it? Does a kind of cowboy mentality hold hostage our better impulses? Hard to say, but we’ll need our special month until that hurdle is jumped.
And there’s more.
We will continue to need our women’s month, and the other commemorative months as long as the true history about such matters as the Civil War, the role of the North in the economics of slavery, discrimination against women, people of color, the LGBT community, Jews and Muslims is excluded from our classrooms.
Currently, our president has outlawed diversity and inclusion efforts while banning books he considers bad for fostering American pride. Teachers, still mostly women, are being admonished not to teach the truth. Librarians are threatened when displaying or recommending titles not approved by the president. Book banning is a rebooted sport. Before their passing, Howard Zinn, author of “A People’s History of the United States,” and James W. Loewen, author of “Lies My Teacher Told Me,” offered just the kind of refreshing, unvarnished truths that Trump reviles.
And there’s one more very important reason that we still need Women’s History Month. We live in a time when women and girls have been trafficked, disrespected, spoken of in vile ways, and forced to put up and shut up to keep their jobs or homes. We need to lift up girls and women, let them know they deserve more, and that we who have come before them have their backs.
Until we vanquish leaders and attitudes that diminish and demean women; until it is no longer okay for men to get a slap on the wrist for hateful acts against women; until women feel respected and safe in their work and social environments; and until history in our schools tells the truth, we will continue to need Women’s History Month.
So, as we remember Marie Curie and the Nobel Prize in Physics she had to share with her husband in 1903 or not receive it at all, we also should recall the Nobel Prize in Chemistry she won alone in 1911. She’s the only person to win two Nobels in two different fields. Dare we suggest she did it in heels, if not backwards?
This one’s for you, Dr. Curie.
Therese (she/her/hers)
Judy (she/her/hers)
Didi (she/her/hers)
Leading Ladies Executive Team
Leadingladiesvote.org
ladies@leadingladiesvote.org