March's Woofer Revolution looks at Women's History Month!
The National Women's History Project , founded in 1980, is an educational nonprofit organization. Its mission is to recognize and celebrate the diverse and historic accomplishments of women by providing information and educational materials and programs.
Here's the story behind Women's History Month taken from their website: As recently as the 1970's, women's history was virtually an unknown topic in the K-12 curriculum or in general public consciousness. To address this situation, the Education Task Force of the Sonoma County (California) Commission on the Status of Women initiated a "Women's History Week" celebration for 1978.The week March 8th, International Women's Day, was chosen as the focal point of the observance. The local Women's History Week activities met with enthusiastic response, and dozens of schools planned special programs for Women's History Week. Over one-hundred community women participated by doing special presentations in classrooms throughout the country and an annual "Real Woman" Essay Contest drew hundreds of entries. The finale for the week was a celebratory parade and program held in the center of downtown Santa Rosa, California.
By 1986, 14 states had already declared March as Women's History Month. This momentum and state-by-state action was used as the rational to lobby Congress to declare the entire month of March 1987 as National Women's History Month. In 1987, Congress declared March as National Women's History Month in perpetuity. A special Presidential Proclamation is issued every year which honors the extraordinary achievements of American women.
The organization's overarching theme for 2010 and our 30th Anniversary celebration is Writing Women Back into History. It often seems that the history of women is written in invisible ink. Even when recognized in their own times, women are frequently left out of the history books. To honor our 2010 theme, the NWHP highlight pivotal themes from previous years. Each of these past themes recognizes a different aspect of women’s achievements, from ecology to art, and from sports to politics.
WOOF wishes to recognize those women who brought us to this point, those women who are working daily to advocate for our rights, and those women who will soon carry the torch!
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3 comments:
This is such an important post--thank you for sharing the message with your readers. I wrote a similar post on Feisty and I think we need to get the word out to as many women as possible.
Even though boomer women have made tremendous and far-reaching strides in the hard-founght battle for gender parity, we still have a long way to go.
So let's start by writing our history in indelible ink--no more of the invisible kind--just like we won't be an invisible generation of older women!
Yay! Sisters--let's keep changing the world and supporting one another!
Awesome, Eileen! I will check out your post on http:www.FeistySideofFifty.com.
And amen! Lest we not forget women DO change the world!
Diana
Great, Eileen. I'll be sure to check it out, too.
Agreed. Let's keep women marching into the future!
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