After repeated petitions for nearly a decade by the National Women’s History Project, Congress designated March as Women’s History Month in 1987. Each subsequent year, the President of the US has issued a special proclamation labeling March Women’s History Month (WHM) and explaining its purpose.
Image of poster featuring the now iconic “Rosie the Riveter,” created by J. Howard Miller. Poster used by the War Production Coordinating Committee. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
“During Women’s History Month,” Barack Obama’s 2016 WHM proclamation underscored, “we remember the trailblazers of the past, including the women who are not recorded in our history books, and we honor their legacies by carrying forward the valuable lessons learned from the powerful examples they set.”((As of this posting, March 1, 2017, the White House Office of the Press Secretary had not yet released a WHM proclamation by Donald Trump.))
Despite its good intention–to set aside time to celebrate women’s contributions to social, cultural and political history–WHM has provoked scathing criticism from men and women, conservatives and radicals, young and old, since its inception. Some note that the themes of WHM and the annual presidential proclamations reinforce traits, such as domesticity and selflessness, associated with stereotypes and traditional constructs of white, middle-class femininity. Ronald Regan’s 1987 WHM proclamation underscored that, “most importantly, as women take part in the world of work, they also continue to embrace and nurture the family as they have always done.”
Celebrating women’s past accomplishments under one unifying theme each year can trivialize and attempt to homogenize womanhood. By focusing on exceptional figures and important milestones, some accuse, WHM endorses a narrative that “keeps women of color on the margins.” It oversimplifies diverse experiences and, in some cases, ignores how race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, and age, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, political beliefs, and geographic location affect “womanhood.”
“Women’s past accomplishments (and failures) deserve to be studied, appreciated, criticized, and otherwise actively engaged—not passively cheered in a banal annual celebration.”((Karen Swallow Prior, “The End of Women’s History Month” The Atlantic (March 1, 2013). ))
Guerrilla Girls online logo. © Guerrilla Girls, 2016.
The Guerrilla Girls–a group of feminist activist artists who work to expose sexual and racial discrimination–challenge that “assigning commemorative months to social issues has become another form of tokenism.”
“What happens the rest of the year?” their “Pop Quiz” poster asks viewers. Their answer: “Discrimination.”
Poster, “Guerrilla Girls’ Pop Quiz,” 1990. © Guerrilla Girls, 1990. A print of the poster is currently part of the exhibition, “Political Intent,” Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Image courtesy of Guerrilla Girls.
More recently, in 2013, The Atlantic, while praising the study of women in history, castigated Women’s History Month. Designating a separate month or week to commemorate gender, race, or any cultural group, the magazine argued, perpetuates marginalization. Author Karen Swallow Prior quipped, “If history is the marathon, Women’s History Month is merely the cheering from the sidelines.”((Karen Swallow Prior, “The End of Women’s History Month” The Atlantic (March 1, 2013).))
Where do you stand in the intellectual debate over Women’s History Month and other commemorative months?
Graduate students, faculty, and staff in the history department at UMass Boston explore the unique experiences, roles, accomplishments, and failures of women, individually and collectively, throughout history. Every semester, we undertake some research on women at the local, national, and international level. This year, during WHM, we’ll share some of that research on this site.
Professor Heidi Gengenbach learning to winnow pounded peanuts, with Susanna Ntimba, in Facazisse, Mozambique, 1995.
We’ll travel through time and across the globe, sharing research about gender, the political economy of food and women’s lives in Mozambique; the link between shame, sexuality and witchcraft in colonial Dorchester; the connection between gender and perceptions/experiences of illness in 17th- and 18th-century England; and the history of women and tattooing.
Ruth Batson addresses crowd of civil rights activists, ca.1961. Reproduced courtesy of Schlesinger Library. Further reproduction prohibited.
We’ll also examine the civil rights activism of Bostonians Ruth Batson and Grace Lorch; and leadership of political conservatives, including Louise Day Hicks, in the 20th century. We’ll share research about unique experiences of whaling women in New Bedford, and much more. Stay tuned!
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