To align with International Women's Day on March 8th, Women's History Month is celebrated during this month, March.
Celebrating women has long been a part of March. In ancient Rome, there was a festival celebrating motherhood and women at large called 'Matronalia'. It was made in the original Roman Calendar as the first day of the year, which at the time was March. We've aimed to empower, heal and provide hope for the women in our communities for so long, some begin to dismiss the need of the month.
Every time gender-based discrimination is dismissed by someone so used to our unfair world, I picture the stereotypical image demonstrating evolution of culture. You know the one, a male hunter-gatherer next to a man rolling a stone wheel, a man with more modern tools, a man fighting in ancient looking armour, a Victorian-looking man, then finally the modern man hunched back by a computer. Such quickly chosen yet silently bigotry-inducing imagery has infiltrated our culture, and it really quite gets to me.
According to Richard Bulliet, a professor emeritus of history at Columbia University who wrote extensively about the concept of 'the wheel', the wheel didn't really exist as how we imagine it ever so long ago. From the end of Rome to the 1600s, wheels were common as transport, however, only to carry women and their female entourages around in wagons. Men rode horses.
Computers evolved from typewriters. Although many men claimed that they invented the typewriter first, it only gained popularity among women entering the work force.
The Young Women's Christian Association established the first typing school in 1881, and even for long before businesses would train women to hire. By 1900, an estimate of the number of workers who use typewriters showed that 75% of this workforce were women.
Although extremely trivial, showing just men in our diagrams undermines women's contributions to history. And that's what Women's History Month is about, to honour their contributions.
I, on purpose, haven't named any of the many, many influential women who have shaped our world, as to provide motivation for you to research them and educate yourself on the importance of women's history.
Written by Mai, a Bournemouth Supernova
