Why We Celebrate Women's History Month

Women's History Month is a legally declared international celebration honoring the contributions of women to history, culture, and society. Since 1987, it has been observed annually in March in the United States.

As declared annually by a presidential proclamation, Women's History Month in the United States is dedicated to reflecting on the numerous but often-overlooked contributions of women such as Abigail Adams, Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, and Rosa Parks to American history from independence to the present day.

In 1978, nine years before it became a month-long observation, Sonoma County, California, observed a Women's History Week. While celebrating the achievements of women may seem to be an obvious concept today, in 1978, the organizers of Women's History Week saw it as a way of rewriting widely taught versions of American history that largely ignored the contributions of women.

In demonstrating the impact of Women's History Month, the National Women's History Alliance points to a 50-year progress report on the progress of women in the United States issued by the White House in March 2011 to coincide with Women's History Month. The report found that younger women are now more likely to hold college degrees than their male counterparts and that the number of men and women in the American workforce had nearly equalized.

Why March Is Women's History Month

In the 1970s, women's history remained rarely covered or even discussed topic in the K-12 curriculum of U.S. schools. Hoping to rectify 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 Taskforce chose the week of March 8 to correspond with that year's observance of International Women's Day.

During that first Women's History Week in 1978, hundreds of students competed in an essay contest on the topic of "Real Woman," presentations were made at dozens of schools, and a parade with floats and marching bands was held in downtown Santa Rosa, California.

As the movement grew in popularity, other communities across the country held their own Women's History Week celebrations in 1979. In early 1980, a collaboration of women's advocacy groups, historians, and scholars led by the National Women's History Project-now the National Women's History Alliance-urged the U.S. Congress to give the event national recognition. In Congress, Democratic U.S. Representative Barbara Mikulski of Maryland and Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah co-sponsored a successful congressional resolution declaring a National Women's History Week to be observed the same year. Their sponsorship of the legislation in a Congress deeply divided along party lines demonstrated strong bipartisan support for the recognition of the achievements of American women.

On February 28, 1980, President Jimmy Carter issued a Presidential Proclamation declaring the week of March 8th, 1980 as the first National Women's History Week. President Carter's proclamation read in part:

"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."

Lewis, Jone Johnson. "Why We Celebrate Women's History Month." ThoughtCo, Sep. 17, 2020, thoughtco.com/womens-history-month-3530805.