This Women’s History Month we honor all those courageous women who demanded America aspire to its highest ideals, yet we also lift up our brave sisters who chronicled those advances in the face of tremendous adversity.
Stories of women’s heroism can inspire us or reveal that our personal struggles are indeed political problems demanding solutions. And these very storytellers – be she a journalist, author, artist, or historian – help us all recognize the persistent inequities, in pay, care giving, housework, health care, and workplace discrimination – all which take harsher tolls on Black and Hispanic women.
These heroes and storytellers lay the foundation for why House Democrats passed the Paycheck Fairness Act, the Women’s Health Protection Act, and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, as well as the American Rescue Plan’s stronger housing assistance and Child Tax Credit supports.
These truth tellers also reveal universal realities, as Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas did in defending natural treasures like the Everglades, or as author Zora Neal Hurston showed us in a fuller picture of love, life and cruelty in the South, just as journalist Mabel Norris Reese slowly exposed the Klan’s real power and crimes in our state. These women’s stories are vital to us all.
This Women’s History Month, perhaps more than others, we risk sliding back on our victories, be it over the basic control of our own bodies due to lost abortion rights, or even the ability to tell women’s stories on college campuses overrun by reactionaries. But we will never unleash the full potential of women – or America – until gender no longer determines full access to equality, freedom and justice. Telling the truth about women’s accomplishments, and our journeys to securing these rights and freedoms, are vital to building a nation where all women can be great.
