Departments
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Women's
History Month
Submitted by Brenda Wilburn
The public celebration of women's history in this
country began in 1978 as "Women's History Week" in Sonoma
County, California. The week including March 8, International Women's
Day, was selected. In 1981, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Rep. Barbara
Mikulski (D-Md.) co-sponsored a joint Congressional resolution proclaiming
a national Women's History Week. In 1987, Congress expanded the
celebration to a month, and March was declared Women's History Month.
Before 1970, women's history was rarely the subject of serious study.
There was no formal doctoral training in the subject available anywhere
in the country. Since then, however, the field has undergone a metamorphosis.
Today almost every college offers women's history courses and most
major graduate programs offer doctoral degrees in the field.
Two significant factors contributed to the emergence of women's
history. The women's movement of the sixties caused women to question
their invisibility in traditional American history texts. The movement
also raised the aspirations as well as the opportunities of women,
and produced a growing number of female historians. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg,
one of the early women's historians, has remarked that "without
question, our first inspiration was political. Aroused by feminist
charges of economic and political discrimination . . . we turned
to our history to trace the origins of women's second-class status."
Women's history was also part of a larger movement that transformed
the study of history in the United States. "History" had
traditionally meant political history—a chronicle of the key
political events and of the leaders, primarily men, who influenced
them. But by the 1970s "the new social history" began
replacing the older style. Emphasis shifted to a broader spectrum
of American life, including such topics as the history of urban
life, public health, ethnicity, the media, and poverty.
Since women rarely held leadership positions and until recently
had only a marginal influence on politics, the new history, with
its emphasis on the sociological and the ordinary, was an ideal
vehicle for presenting women's history. It has covered such subjects
as the history of women's education, birth control, housework, marriage,
sexuality, and child rearing. As the field has grown, women's historians
realized that their definition of history needed to expand as well.
The theme for National Women’s History Month, March 2007 is
Generations of Women Moving History Forward. The 2007 honorees represents
many generations of women who with their amazing intelligence, talent,
courage and tenacity testify to the myriad ways that generations
of women have moved history forward. To get a list of the honorees,
visit their web-site at www.nwhp.org.
The UAW Women’s Committee members invite their sisters to
attend our monthly meetings and become a part of paving the way
to make history at Local 1853. We meet at 12:30 on the same Sunday
as our Union Meetings. This month we will have articles that educate
our membership on Women Awareness and History.
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