Women in History Typewriters, Computers, and Modern Life Copyright © 2000 Henrietta W. Hay

Women in History March 17, 2000

What if women had been included in the history books?
Eve did get into the most widely read one, but she was always the villain. We have read about Athena and Cleopatra and Joan of Arc and Queen Isabella and Betsy Ross and Golda Meir and, more recently, Sally Ride, but generally the writers of history books have never met a woman they felt worthy of inclusion.
I'm a great test taker when the scores don't count, so I took the sample quizzes of the CSAP that were printed in the papers recently. I am happy to report, I passed. But I didn't do so well on another test that I found on the web having to do with women's history. Much to my complete embarrassment, I failed. Here are three of questions I missed. How many can you answer?
Who printed the first copy of the Declaration of Independence that included the signers' names?
Who came to this country as a teenager to study science and stayed to become one the world's foremost experimental physicists?
What mother led a 125-mile march of child workers all the way from the mills of Pennsylvania to President Theodore Roosevelt's vacation home on Long Island?
The answer to the first is Mary Katherine Goddard, newspaper publisher who had such a strong reputation in the colonies that when Congress fled to Baltimore in 1776 they trusted her with the revolutionary task of printing their treasonous document.
Chien-Shiung Wu received both the National Science Medal and the internationally respected Wolf prize for scientific research. Her most important experiment showed that conservation of parity could be violated in nature.
The feisty labor organizer, Mary Harris Jones, known as Mother Jones, led the children's march to bring the evils of child labor to the attention of the president and the national press.
March is Women's History Month. The idea started in Europe in 1911 when March 8 was designated as International Women's Day. But it was not until 1981 that it became official here when Congress passed a resolution establishing National Women's History Week. Co-sponsors of the resolution were Senator Orrin Hatch from Utah, and Representative Barbara Mikulski from Maryland. Talk about the Odd Couple. If those two can agree on something it's gotta be worthwhile.
But long before the official month was designated, activist women were realizing that "history" as taught in school was incomplete and often inaccurate. Women simply did not exist in most history courses.
Of course, it is hard to be famous or heroic when you are a second class citizen, which women were until the twentieth century, but through the years they have managed to make contributions in every field of endeavor.
As calls were being made for inclusion of Black Americans and Native Americans in the history books, women also began demanding that some changes be made. "Every time a girl reads a womanless history she learns she is worth less," wrote Myra and David Sadker in "Failing at Fairness: How America's Schools Cheat Girls."
Finally universities began to see the light and to include the fields of women's history and the broader field of women's studies. Slowly the changes are trickling down so that little girls can read history with a whole new slant -- history that includes both men and women.
Here are a few more to look up in your new history books.
Who was the last reigning monarch of the Hawaiian Islands, deposed when American business and military interests wanted to annex Hawaii to the U. S?
What woman enlisted in the Union Army as a man and infiltrated the Confederate camp in the guise of a boyish black cook? Note: apparently the mission was more successful than her biscuits.
What presidential wife, who is famous for rescuing a portrait of George Washington from the nasty British, was actually, in her final brave act before leaving the White House, rescuing a handsome portrait of . . . herself.
If you want to know the answers to these, see whether you can find them in your history books. If not, try http://www.nwhp.org/test.html.
History looks different when the contributions of women are included.