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Who gets to be celebrated during Women’s History Month?

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Photo by T. Chick McClure on Unsplash

As a U.S. historian who is African American and specializes in African American history, February is a uniquely busy time in my professional life. I know I speak for my black sisters and brothers in the academy (especially the sisters, who perform the greater share of service) when I say that each year, I feel triumphant if I’m still standing and somewhat intelligible after a month of invited talks, talk-backs, panels, essay contributions, and op-eds on topics of black history, including the significance of Black History Month itself. By the time March rolls around, I have little energy left to commit to Women’s History Month. What’s more, rarely am I asked to do so — which, I believe, indicates persistent cultural, educational, and systemic failures to contend with intersectionality as it pertains to people’s identities and experience. But that’s a topic for another day.

Or is it?

Women’s History Month grew out of National Women’s History Week, established by presidential proclamation in 1980. In his declaration, President Jimmy Carter stated the observance’s purpose as recognizing “unsung” women and their “too often” “unnoticed” contributions to the nation’s greatness. Seven years later, Congress passed legislation extending the celebration of women’s history to a full month, and every year since, U.S. presidents have issued proclamations designating March as Women’s History Month. Much as is the case with Black History Month, this annual observance of women’s history continues to follow the “they were there too!” approach that Carter articulated 31 years ago. This approach no longer suffices.

Right now, there is an urgency to questions about what it means to be a woman and who, in fact, gets to be a woman. In this particular historical moment, any consideration of women’s history should educate people as to how definitions and experiences of being a woman have changed over time. We live in a time when a rise in anti-transgender legislation restricts people’s rights to go to the bathroom, self-identify at school, participate in sports, receive proper health care in prisons, or serve in the military. As a faculty member at Wellesley College, I am front row to current conversations and contests of gender identity. In recent years, like the nation’s approximately 30 other women’s colleges, Wellesley has wrestled with the question of who “qualifies” as a woman, as students, faculty, and staff increasingly challenge traditional definitions through their politics, scholarship, and personhood. In particular, more trans women are seeking admission and more people are transitioning during their enrollment, meaning that one of the nation’s top colleges known for “women who will [lead, succeed, serve, etc.]” will be graduating an increasing number of “men who will.” In 2015 the college’s board of trustees voted to update its admission policy to create space for these students. In doing so, Wellesley affirmed how these young people — along with countless others — have redefined womanhood and manhood to house a myriad of identities, experiences, and bodies. They have also emphasized the constructedness, and therefore the instability, of gender in ways that exploded the binary of man/woman.

These events in gender allow for, and in fact require, new approaches to the commemorating of women’s history. If we continue with the “they were there too!” approach, for instance, we’d do well to consider who “they” is. Accordingly, rather than simply highlight laudable women, Women’s History Month is a time to discuss, study, and educate one another about the changing definitions of womanhood.

Some will argue that I am sacrificing the commemoration of women for gender studies. My first response is “let them.” A less flippant response is that we greatly diminish any recognition of women in history without consideration of what their woman-ness meant in their historical moment, which, to come full circle, requires paying serious attention to intersectionality. In the survey course I teach, for example, we discuss how, throughout U.S. history, definitions of normative womanhood rooted in whiteness have denied black women their womanhood and the privileges or considerations that go with it. An intersectional approach to Women’s History Month can only amplify its importance as a platform for celebrating women and prompting social change because this approach highlights how power relationships and constructs of gender (as influenced by notions of race, class, sexuality, nationality, and so on) have affected who can claim womanhood, as well as experiences of womanhood.

As a national, educational event, Women’s History Month is the perfect opportunity to foster inclusive ideas of womanhood necessary to protect the rights and lives of all women, and this, to my mind, requires that this be a primary objective, if not the primary objective, of this annual observance. Contests over what it means to be a woman in particular historical circumstances explain the increasing number (20 plus per year) of trans women, particularly trans women of color, suffering violent transphobia-inspired deaths. Contests over what it means to be a woman are why African American women are more than three times as likely to suffer pregnancy-related deaths than white women (their black babies are twice as likely to die than white babies). Contests over what it means to be a woman are what allows for immigrant women and girls to be denied asylum in the United States as protection against physical and sexual abuse and trafficking, despite Donald Trump’s declaration in his first presidential proclamation of Women’s History Month that the United States must fight for the “so many women around the world, where women are often not protected and treated disgracefully as second-class citizens.”

I haven’t given enough consideration to Women’s History Month in recent years. I’ve allowed the professional demands on me during Black History Month and my priorities as a person of color to keep me from giving time or energy to it. Those of us in the academy have a responsibility — because we have the platform — to take advantage of the spotlight Women’s History Month provides to promote the diversity of womanhood. It is imperative that we promote greater inclusivity during this time when, under the influence of Donald Trump, all three branches of the U.S. government have shown an increasing disregard, if not disdain, for women and their rights, bodies, and testimonies.



More articles by Category: Feminism
More articles by Tag: Women's history, Intersectionality, Transgender, Race
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