March is Women’s History Month!

Women's history was rarely the subject of serious study before the 1970’s. There were no formal women’s historians, and there were no formal degree programs for women’s studies in colleges and universities across the country. Over the last 40 years, however, the field has grown and transformed. Today there are over a thousand programs worldwide. Almost every college or university offers women’s history courses and most major graduate programs offer doctoral degrees in the field.

There were two important contributions that made women’s history emerge as a significant part of American history and culture. The first was the women's movement of the sixties, which compelled women to question their role and visibility within the context of traditional American history.  Opportunities became available and the aspirations of women were raised.  

The second significant impact of women's history came from a larger movement that sought to change the way people studied the history in the United States. Traditionally, when people thought about history and how to study it, they did so in the context of political history.  This study of political history usually involved using a timeline of key political events, and studying the biographies of political leaders— primarily men, who influenced those events. In the 1970’s this style of studying history began to change and people became more interested in the study of the “new social history”.  The focus shifted to the larger areas of social change and public policy. 

 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 8th, International Women's Day, was selected. In 1981, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Representative Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland) 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.

From Pearson Education’s Factmonster.com