History.com features only one woman giving a speech on its website. Why?

Recently, during school, I was browsing the portion of History.com’s website devoted to speeches. I was in my Speech and Debate class, looking for historical examples of interesting speeches. Since I am interested in strong female leaders, I naturally looked at the section devoted to Women’s History. I noticed that there was only one speech given by a woman in that section: a speech by Sarah Palin accepting the nomination for vice president in 2008.

I looked at the other categories of speeches listed on the website, desperate for another option. I checked the site’s page for Black History, but all speeches in that section were given by male leaders, too. None of the speeches mention women central to the civil rights movement, like Rosa Parks. In fact, none of the other sections included any additional speeches given by women; Sarah Palin is the single female voice featured in all of the speeches published on History.com.

I want to know why this is the case. There are plenty of historically significant women who could be featured. Even if we focus only on politics, Sarah Palin wasn’t even the first female major party candidate for vice president — Geraldine Ferraro was, in 1984. Why not mention Ferraro, too? Or why not include transcriptions of speeches given by Susan B. Anthony, who played a big role in women’s history and led the women’s suffrage movement? How about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second woman on the Supreme Court, who has consistently fought for equality?

It’s important for History.com to not only add more videos and audio that feature women who made a difference in history, but specifically to let these women use their own voices to tell their stories whenever possible. For example, in some cases women’s achievements are profiled on the site, but the voiceover describing the woman’s actions is a man’s. For example, there is a video of the countdown to Sally Ride’s lift-off into space, but the only voice included is a man’s — even though Ride is known for being the first American woman in space.

I would like to know why. More than hearing an explanation, though, I would like to see change. Women don’t need men to speak for them, we need opportunities to learn from and about strong female leaders. History.com is such a useful and informative source; is this really the message they would like to give young learners?

I could list all of the reasons that men and women still aren’t yet equal in the United States, but I’ll just list the ones that aggravate me the most. On average, a woman’s salary is 78 percent to 82 percent of a man’s. Of the 114 people who have served on the U.S. Supreme Court, only four have been female. There are also examples of inequality in words and phrases we use every day. For example, we use the word “mankind” to refer to all people, when we could use “humankind.” “Womankind” is a word used so little that I wasn’t sure it existed until I looked it up. “Man-to-man” is another example: We assume that when two people interact, they are men, completely leaving out the possibility that women have something to say.

These acts of sexism, both in our daily lives and in the most powerful parts of our society, affect people’s attitudes toward men and women. At school, I’ve heard people ask each other what their mom made for Thanksgiving, not what their family made for Thanksgiving, without even realizing their mistake. I have seen teachers ask sick students if their mom was home to pick them up, not their parents. Why is it an assumption that women are always the ones to stay home and cook?

Women have faced challenges to ending the discrimination that has persisted against them all throughout history, yet we remain true to the fight for equality, for we feel that someday, issues like these will no longer exist. I, along with many others, will not back down until we see these changes occur — starting, for me, with demanding equal representation on a website documenting history.