By Kyra Palumbo
Women. Some say you can’t live with them or without them. Me? I say you simply can’t live without them.
Women’s History Month begins March 1 and extends to March 31. Women’s History Month started out as Women’s History Week and was only locally celebrated in Santa Rosa, California. This was organized by the Education Task Force of the Sonoma County Commission on the Status of Women in 1978.
International Women’s Day also falls in March, March 8 to be exact, which is the week the Commission in California decided to make the original Women’s History Week. Following in California’s footsteps, movements grew all over the country for Women’s History Week celebrations the following year.
Shortly after this, in 1980, a group of women and historians that were led by the National Women’s History Project, now known as the National Women’s History Alliance, fought to be recognized nationally. Come that February, President Jimmy Carter issued the first Presidential Proclamation that declared the week of March 8, 1980 as National Women’s History Week.
Presidents that followed continued to announce a National Women’s History Week in March up until 1987 when Congress passed the Public Law 100-9, which declared March as Women’s History Month. Between the years of 1988 and 1994, Congress passed additional resolutions that authorized the president at the time to pronounce March of each year as Women’s History Month. Since 1995, every president has issued annual proclamations designating the month of March to be Women’s History Month.
Something I was not aware of was that the National Women’s History Alliance selects a theme each year to properly celebrate the month. The theme for 2021 captures the spirit of the challenging times we as a society are currently facing. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of the women’s suffrage centennial celebrations were forced to be rescheduled, the National Women’s History Alliance decided to extend the theme for this March’s Women’s History Month to “Valiant Women of the Vote: Refusing to Be Silenced.”
Here are a few statistics for you to chew on about women that really make you stop and think.
As of 2018, there were approximately five million more women in the United States than men. Around 46.6% of women aged 18 to 24 years reported they had some college or an associate’s degree under their belt. Women age 85 and older outnumbered men two to one.
46.8% of the labor force is made up of women and 57% of women aged 16 and older work outside of the home as stated in the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. There were also over 9.6 million women enrolled in a college undergraduate program and another 2.5 million in a graduate or professional school.
What I think really takes the cake, or the bread rather, is that in 2018, 49% of employed women in the United States said they are their family’s primary breadwinner. Keeping in mind that women STILL do not make as much as men do, women make around $0.82 for every $1.00 that a man makes.
Finally, to bring some applause to women on campus, specifically women in athletics. I mention these women because they struggle to be seen as equal to the way that men are seen in the sports realm. I also discuss them because I am one and have seen first-hand the hard work that goes on both on and off the courts, field, or ice. Every year the conference we play in, the Commonwealth Coast Conference, names student athletes to their academic all-conference team and to be included in this you must have a cumulative grade point average of at least a 3.3 and attain a sophomore academic status. Excluding football, out of 55 student athletes to be recognized, 40 were women. Women are amazing, and I think the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg said it best when she said, “My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent.” Keep it up and go out and kick some ass, ladies!
