The Campbell Reporter

News

Event recognizes the long struggle

Here are some startling tidbits of U.S. women's history you may have missed in grade school.

Many urban women who did not have families or husbands fell into prostitution in the late 1800s when women were not allowed to work. At a time when abortions were illegal, women tried homemade abortions such as drinking cleaning detergents or using self-administered surgical methods.

In the Victorian era middle-class women were domesticated, confined to the home to do little more than read the Bible, draw and play the parlor organ. Women had the choice between suffering domesticity or breaking social norms and being shunned by society.

These parts of women's history, as sad as they may be, are a marker for how far women have come in fighting for their rights.

To bring home the oppression women once faced and to recognize how far they have come, West Valley College is presenting a program for Women's History Month. The planning committee, made up of faculty and students at WVC, coordinated a series of free public events for the month-long program.

"Women's history month is an opportunity to teach everybody," said English instructor Dulce Gray, who is one of the coordinators of WVC's Women's History Month. "It's an opportunity to remind women of the hard work they've done. It's an opportunity to teach men that they are equal partners with women."

For hundreds of years, most of women's contributions to society were omitted from public documents. What history we have of women in our country is somewhat limited. Prior to the 1970s, women's history classes were not taught in public schools.

Women's History Month started after Molly Murphy MacGregor co-founded the National Women's History Project in Sonoma County. In 1981, NWHP worked to have Congress pass a National Women's History Week and then in 1987 Congress resolved to make March Women's History Month. Since then, the president makes a yearly proclamation calling upon the people of the United States to recognize the month.

Suffragists, activists, leaders, and other women are all recognized this month. Susan B. Anthony, Alice Stone Blackwell and Julia Ward Howe were some of the prominent women's rights activists who helped give women the right to vote. In 1916, Jeannette Rankin was the first woman to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Toni Morrison was the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature. Madeleine Albright was the first woman to become secretary of state, the highest-ranking woman in the U.S. government at the time.

Jerrie Cobb was the first woman in the U.S. to undergo astronaut testing in 1953. NASA, however, canceled the women's program in 1963, and it was not until 1983 that Sally Ride was sent into space.

It may come as a surprise that Hillary Clinton is not the first woman to run for president. Victoria Claflin Woodhull was nominated by the National Radical Reformers to run for president in 1872. Clinton, however, became the first woman in U.S. history to win a presidential primary contest (in New Hampshire).

Women's History Month is not just about realizing how far women have come, but how far women have to go.

"Our brand of feminism is not the same as anywhere else in the world," said Gray. "The fundamental concept of feminism is that a woman has the right to choose her own life and beyond that there are many other issues that define feminism."

"Women's issues," said Gray. "It's not that they're separate from men's issues. They're unique. Mostly women raise children ... their needs are unique."

"Women are facing challenges in the U.S. and around the world," said Susan Horton, coordinator of the Educational Transition and Adult Reentry Program, who coordinated Women's History Month at WVC in previous years. "Not every woman sees herself as able to achieve because of poverty or oppression ... And only recently are women encouraged to become doctors or presidents. We want women to know they are able to achieve equally anything that a man would."

For Women's History Month, WVC showed films, held speaker events, art exhibits and music performances to celebrate and inform people about women's history. They even presented a play called Sex Signals, where community members learned about misconceived gender roles and types of sexual harassment.

There will be a panel with women of various occupations discussing "Women in the Workforce" at the Fireside Lounge on March 25 from 1:30 to 3 p.m. Also, the film Persepolis will be shown followed by a discussion about Iranian women and graphic novels by Vicky Kalivitis at the Global Education Center, March 26, from noon to 3 p.m..

For more information about upcoming Women's History Month events at WVC visit www.westvalley.edu/events.