Happy Anniversary? National Women’s History Month is 30 Years Old

A history lesson:

1981—President Jimmy Carter signed legislation declaring the week of March 8, National Women’s History Week. Lobbying was required to have it re-declared each year until…

1987—US Congress declared March to be National Women’s History Month, in perpetuity. “A special Presidential Proclamation is issued every year which honors the extraordinary achievements of American women.”

2010—Thirty years later. We have achieved so much and have come so far. Our daughters and our sons don’t know the meaning of gender discrimination. They won’t join women’s organizations, and many of the single sex institutions are no longer enjoying the “best and the brightest” of the pool of women applicants. (And as a graduate of Bryn Mawr College and with a daughter who is a graduate of Barnard, I am a fierce and loyal supporter of single sex higher education but I know that many women eschew this socially limiting educational environment.)

So I have a hard time with the 30th anniversary National Women’s History Week theme of “Writing Women Back into History?” To me this seems so out of step with the new reality that our youngsters don’t want to know about what was, but they want to make their lives about what is. And what is is just not keeping up with their expectations. And for anyone who knows about the expectations of every new generation, will know this generation will surely, as did the last generation, determine the direction we take. And they will do it faster and more confidently than did we.

Our children drove the electronic media age far beyond our wildest imaginations as we have lamented the loss of print publications. Newspapers are dying. Books are electronic. Talking is now texting. The ether is where it takes place.

And they won’t invest their energies or their talents into organizations that won’t recognize that they don’t recognize gender discrimination as a viable way of conducting business. It just won’t compute. And those businesses structures that don’t recognize their new wiring, will be left to die.

Now, do we women want to let history take its course? Or do we want to make the course of history? I, for one, favor the latter. Never mind writing women back into history. It’s time not only to celebrate but to support the women who are making history, now. And they are our daughters and sons who refuse to allow our old constructs of gender stereotyping, gender discrimination, sexual harassment, and inequality in the workplace and in the home to be part of their narrative.

Why don’t we celebrate the history we are going to make and not only celebrate the triumphs of the past? We have no time to lose. No time to lament. There is no time for history like the present.