As March draws to a close, the Women’s Resource Center reflects on how Women’s History Month affects the past and the present.
“There’s really not a lot of women’s history in elementary and secondary schools,” said Harriet Masters, director of the WRC.
“We love to take any opportunity to inform ETSU students of women breaking new ground and making new discoveries,” Masters said.
Women’s History Month began as a week in 1914 when the U.S. Congress passed a resolution.
It was extended to a month in 1987 as an effort on the part of the National Women’s History Project.
Women’s history was first recorded in 2700 B.C. when Merit Ptah was documented as the first woman to become a doctor.
Since then, women have made many accomplishments, including suffrage (Sojourner Truth – 1843), winning Nobel Prizes (Marie Curie – 1903), creating the American Red Cross (Florence Nightingale – 1845) and becoming U.S. Supreme Court Judges (Sandra Day O’Connor – 1981).
“Discipline, decisiveness and courage are characteristics every historical woman possessed,” Masters said.
“Figures such as Harriet Tubman and Gloria Steinem exuded fearlessness and bravery in everything that they did,” she said.
Women’s History Month also looks toward the future of women everywhere.
A woman president (one of the only achievements not made to date) may or may not be too far in the future.
“I don’t think it will happen in my lifetime,” Masters said. “I certainly hope it will happen in the next 20 years, but I don’t believe it’s likely.”
The WRC’s next event will be a Health Series Lunch-Break Seminar on Tuesday, April 12, in the D.P. Culp University Center, hosted by Janet Hall, a physical therapist for the Wellmont Holston Valley Outpatient Center in Kingsport.
For more information on upcoming events or women’s history, call the Women’s Resource Center at 439-7847.

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