In 1911 Europe, International Women's Day was first celebrated on
March 8th. In many European nations, as well as in the United
States,
women's rights was a political hot topic. Women (and men)
wrote books
on the contributions of women to history. Woman's suffrage —
winning the vote —was a priority of many women's organizations.
With the economic depression of the 1930s which hit on both sides
of the Atlantic, and the advent of World War II, women's rights
went out of fashion. In the 1950s and 1960s, after Betty Friedan pointed to the "problem
that has no name" the boredom and isolation of the middle-class
housewife who often gave up intellectual and professional aspirations
—the women's movement began to revive. With "women's
liberation" in the 1960s, interest in women's issues and women's
history blossomed.
By the 1970s, there was a growing sense by many women that "his-tory"
as taught in school —and especially in grade school and high
school was incomplete with attending to "her-story" as well.
In the United States, calls for inclusion of Black Americans and
Native Americans helped some women realize that women were invisible
in most history courses.
So in the 1970s, many universities began to include the fields
of women's history and the broader field of women's studies.
In 1978 in California, the Education Task Force of the Sonoma County
Commission on the Status of Women began a "Women's History Week"
celebration. The week was chosen to coincide with International
Women's Day, March 8.
The response was positive. Other participants not only determined
to begin their own local Women's History Week projects, but agreed
to support an effort to have Congress declare a national Women's
History Week. Three years later, the United States Congress passed
a resolution establishing National Women's History Week.
 In 1987, at the request of the National
Women's History Project, Congress expanded the week to a month,
and the U.S. Congress has issued a resolution every year since then,
with wide support for Women's History Month. Each year, the U.S.
President issues a proclamation of Women's History Month.
Women Who Left Their Stamps
on History
Five Women's Museums to
Know
The National Women's Hall
of Fame
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