In the United States, Women’s History festivities started as a week-long celebration in 1980. Which later turned into the holiday we now know of as Women’s History Month. According to the White House website the month was instituted during President Jimmy Carter’s administration in 1987.
March 8th, best known as International Women’s Day, was made a worldwide holiday in 1975. and has been officially adopted by more than 25 countries, according to the HISTORY website.
UTRGV History Professor Megan Birk says, “The Women’s Movement is a part of that larger package, where people who had not been extended the full sort of spectrum of their civil rights wanted them and started to demand them publicly.”
Birk says the movement contains components and pieces, such as Title IX, which give women equal opportunity for things such as sports and education. Also, representation and broader access for women in different professional positions, such as being a doctor, professor, or lawyer.
“That time period in the 1970s there was a lot of effort being made to recognize histories that were not at that time mainstream.”
As she says, school curriculums, textbooks, and historians were starting to include the history of women, African Americans, and Mexican Chicanos so that history would be more representative, accurately portrayed.
She continues saying, “Along with those social movements came the desire to have bigger recognition of some of those more specialized subjects at that time.”
Professor Birk said in 1960, multiple groups of people had been discriminated against and treated almost like second-class citizens, influencing a movement to ignite. Some movements were specific to regions and their time; for example, in the Rio Grande Valley, actions such as the Farmer’s movement and the Chicano Movement were in demand.
“The women’s movement successfully was able to make sure that women got to choose .”
But not everything had been easy to accomplish to ensure that no one would be discriminated against for their gender in the 1970s; the goal was to attempt to introduce an amendment called the “Equal Rights Amendment,” sometimes referred to as “ERA”, but it failed to move on forward.
UTRGV Women and Gender Studies Professor Silvia Solis mentions that we have progressed in many ways, but there are still times we take steps backwards.
“We have so much work to do still, but we have also come a long way.”
As President Carter once said, “Understanding the true history of our country will help us to comprehend the need for full equality under the law for all our people.”
This is Silvana Villarreal with Vaquero News.
