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MARCH 4, 2010 ISSUE

Mayor Proclaims March Women’s History Month In Boone

Governor’s Proclamation Applies to State

Story by Bernadette Cahill

Boone Mayor Loretta Clawson proclaimed March as Women’s History Month in Boone and calls on citizens to commemorate and observe the occasion with programs and activities.

What Did You Do In the War, Auntie?
What To Do For Women’s History Month

Besides printing and displaying prominently Gov. Perdue’s proclamation of Women’s History Month throughout March, Women’s History Month is a time to start writing women back into history. An easy and rewarding way to do so is to sit down and record stories of aunts, sisters, mothers, grandmothers, cousins and friends.

Women’s history has been forgotten because women’s’ work on the frontier or the home front has been considered only a backdrop to prominent people like presidents and big events such as wars.

Women’s history has been easy to lose because women were traditionally expected to marry and they took their husband’s family name. There are also fewer documents recording women because they have operated traditionally in the private sphere.

Older women—including those who grew up when a woman’s place was in the home; who, when job-hunting, they looked up the “Women Wanted” newspaper columns; or who received little or nothing on divorce because housewifery wasn’t paid—are an important source of women’s history.

It is important to capture their stories now because they are dying off, yet they are the ones who enjoyed good pay and being central to the workforce during World War II—only to find themselves downgraded or sidelined when the war ended when the men returned.

“Uniques” are also an important source. Uniques are women who never married and/or never had children. With them, the story is in why they blazed new trails for women and where it led them.

For everyone, besides recording the interviewees’ personal information like name, date and place of birth, questions about preferences and aspirations will reveal how being a woman pointed to other choices and directions.

Boone Mayor Loretta Clawson has proclaimed March as Women’s History Month in Boone and calls on citizens to commemorate and observe the occasion with programs and activities. N.C. Gov. Beverly Perdue has proclaimed March as Women’s History Month in North Carolina.

In their proclamations, Clawson and Perdue recognize the contributions of all women of the state and town “in countless recorded and unrecorded ways.” They note that women have always played a critical role in every sphere of life, including the public, private and nonprofit sectors of the economy.

Perdue’s proclamation emphasizes the theme of this year’s commemoration of Women’s History Month, which is “Writing Women Back into History” that plays on the fact that women have been ignored in most written and recorded history.

Perdue also recalls the lead that North Carolina’s women provided in the Revolutionary War when “in 1774, fifty-one women organized the Edenton Tea Party, one of the earliest political acts taken by North Carolina women in protest of the taxation of the colonies without representation within the British government.”

Both Perdue and Clawson mention women’s role in winning votes for women and note that all their work has created “a more fair and just society for all.”

Clawson’s proclamation noted, “the role of American women in history has been consistently overlooked and undervalued.”

To commemorate Women’s History Month, Watauga Public Library has created a section of books and videos about women’s history and displays a map of the United States showing which states did not ratify the Equal Rights Amendment.

Perdue’s Proclamation is available for print by clicking to www.governor09.nc.gov/NewsItems/ProclamationDetail.aspx?newsItemID=159.

The History of Women’s History Month
When March was designated Women’s History Month in 1987, it was created to increase awareness and knowledge of the ignored history of 51 percent of the population.

Up to the 1970s, women’s history was virtually unknown in academia, schools or among the general public. Even the history of the 72-year campaign for the vote had all but disappeared. But in 1978, educators in California started celebrating women’s history during the second week of March to coincide with International Women’s Day, which first took place in Europe on March 8, 1911, during the worldwide battle over votes for women.

After 1978, celebrations of women’s history soon occurred country-wide, and in 1981, Congress issued a Joint Resolution for a National Women’s History Week. In 1987, the week expanded to the whole of March.