Women's History Month originated as National Women's History Week, which was initially celebrated in Santa Rosa, California. It commenced on March 8, coinciding with International Women’s Day. After garnering support from various women's groups, a petition was submitted to Congress and the White House advocating for national recognition. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter proclaimed the first National Women's History Week, aligning it with the week of March 8. Congress subsequently authorized the continuation of Women's History Week, eventually extending it to the entire month of March in 1987. Since then, Women's History Month has been officially recognized as a time to honor and celebrate the contributions of women throughout history.
This month, bring the celebration into the classroom by ensuring that the achievements, struggles, and contributions of women are recognized and celebrated through lessons and curriculum. Provide a more complete and accurate understanding of history, promote gender equality, and empower students with diverse role models to learn from using resources from PBS.
Documentary
Breaking the News: Who decides which stories get told? A scrappy group of women and LGBTQ+ journalists buck the white male-dominated status quo, banding together to launch The 19th*, a digital news startup aiming to combat misinformation. A story of an America in flux, and the voices often left out of the narrative, the documentary Breaking the News shows change doesn’t come easy.
Documentary
One hundred years after the passage of the 19th Amendment, The Vote tells the dramatic culmination story of the hard-fought campaign waged by American women for the right to vote, a transformative cultural and political movement that resulted in the largest expansion of voting rights in U.S. history.
Documentary
Charlotta Spears Bass (1874-1969) one of the first African American women to own and operate a newspaper, and the first African American woman to run for Vice President of the United States, crusaded for over 40 years against racial violence, and discrimination in schools, housing, and the job market, in the pages of the California Eagle.
Learning Media Collection
This collection of video clips, lesson plans, and primary sources details key figures, events, and regional movements of the decades-long fight to win the right to vote for women in the United States. Students will encounter activists including Sojourner Truth, Carrie Chapman Catt, and Grace Abbott, and examine key regional efforts within the movement. Primary source documents offer evidence for a study of the chronology of the campaign for women’s suffrage.
Learning Media Collection
These digital resources present the rich history of 26 little-known Progressive Era women, diverse in profession, race, ethnicity, geographical and class backgrounds, sexual orientation and gender expression, who broke barriers in then-male-dominated fields such as science, business, journalism, exploration, and the arts, and touch on topics such as the labor movement, immigration, politics, civil rights, and women’s suffrage.
Learning Media Collection
Rebel Girls from History celebrates Women's History Month by focusing on the amazing, mostly forgotten women from the late 19th and early 20th century whose lives, actions, and sacrifices helped shape today’s America. They are educators, organizers, fighters, adventurers, and so much more.