RIMS Women's History Month

By George Guy

Last updated over 1 year ago

6 Questions

Instructions

Since 1910, March 8th has been observed as International Women's Day by people around the World. In 1978, an education task force in Sonoma County, California, kicked off Women's History Week on this day. The goal was to draw attention to the fact that women's history wasn't really included in the K-12 school curriculum.  In 1980, President Jimmy Carter declared the week of March 8 Women's History Week across the country. By 1986, 14 states declared the entire month of March as Women's History Month. The following year, Congress declared March Women's History Month.
Traditionally, history has focused on political, military, and economic leaders and events. This approach has often excluded women, both leaders and ordinary citizens, from the accounts. Women's history does not rewrite history, but rather provides a more complete picture of what the women were doing and experiencing during the well-known and less known moments in history.

Match each notable woman in history with their image/achievements.

		She is a fearless humans rights activist and proponent of female education.
		She is a senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, she helped determine what caused the hole in the ozone layer.
		She is the first woman to qualify and compete in the Daytona 500 in 1976 and the Indianapolis 500 in 1977.
		She is the first African American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature; winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
		This Pulitzer Prize-winning woman was the first female publisher of The Washington Post, and any major American Newspaper for that matter.
		One of the first women in the Navy to attain the rank of rear admiral, she was a math whiz and a founding mother of computer languages.
		She uses art to advocate for Deaf culture and make connections between linguistics, music, and American Sign Language (ASL).
		She was the first African American to sing with the Metropolitan Opera, and in 1958 became a delegate to the United Nations.
		She is an American writer in the magic realist tradition who is considered one of the first successful women novelists from Latin America.

Statement by the President on National Women's History Week
February 28, 1980
From the first settlers who came to our shores, from the first American Indian families who befriended them, men and women have worked together to build this Nation. Too often, the women were unsung and sometimes their contributions went unnoticed. But the achievements, leadership, courage, strength, and love of the women who built America was as vital as that of the men whose names we know so well.
As Dr. Gerda Lerner has noted, "Women's history is women's right—an essential, indispensable heritage from which we can draw pride, comfort, courage, and long-range vision."
I ask my fellow Americans to recognize this heritage with appropriate activities during National Women's History Week, March 2-8, 1980. I urge libraries, schools, and community organizations to focus their observances on the leaders who struggled for equality—Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, Lucy Stone, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Harriet Tubman, and Alice Paul.
Understanding the true history of our country will help us to comprehend the need for full equality under the law for all our people. This goal can be achieved by ratifying the 27th amendment to United States Constitution: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."
Jimmy Carter, Statement by the President on National Women's History Week Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/250467

Choose a line from President Carter's speech and explain what it means to you and your education. Why is important to recognize the accomplishments of all?

Mae Jemison, the first black woman to travel in space, once said: “Never limit yourself because of others’ limited imagination; never limit others because of your own limited imagination.” Why is this sentiment so important? How does it relate to Women’s History Month?