By Michelle Houchins, Iridium Range & Inclusion Council member and Engineer
Each March, we have fun Ladies’s Historical past Month and Worldwide Ladies’s Day. These celebrations are a chance to not solely honor the extraordinary achievements of ladies, however to acknowledge the work that also must be accomplished to realize gender equality.
Worldwide Ladies’s Day traces its roots again to 1908 in New York Metropolis, the place feminine manufacturing unit employees united collectively to protest poor working situations. The next yr, the Nationwide Socialist Celebration of America established the primary Nationwide Ladies’s Day to honor these brave manufacturing unit employees. It wasn’t till 1917, when girls have been granted the suitable to vote by the Provisional Authorities of Russia, that Worldwide Ladies’s Day turned a nationwide vacation celebrated on March 8. Over time because the worldwide girls’s motion grew, extra nations started celebrating Worldwide Ladies’s Day. In 1977, the United Nations formally acknowledged Worldwide Ladies’s Day as a vacation.
The story of Ladies’s Historical past Month begins within the metropolis of Santa Rosa, California. In 1978, the ladies of Santa Rosa organized the very first Ladies’s Historical past Week. Discontented with the shortage of ladies’s historical past in Ok-12 curriculum, these girls designated the week of March 8 to spotlight the contributions of ladies in American historical past. The week was filled with particular actions in colleges, a nationwide “Actual Girl” essay contest, and even a celebratory parade held in downtown Santa Rosa, California. The next yr, different communities adopted swimsuit and placed on their very own Ladies’s Historical past Week festivities. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter proclaimed the week of March 8 as Nationwide Ladies’s Historical past Week. When Congress handed Public Legislation 100-9 in 1987, March lastly turned designated as Ladies’s Historical past Month.
