If We Were Told

by Sarah Hurd
– USA –

With the onset of March, Women’s History Month, I wonder how many people still don’t know. “Don’t know what?” you may ask. Answer: All the countless contributions women have made to get us to where we are today—or in other words, all the ways women have made history.

I certainly did not know growing up. In fact, I was clueless and I’m a 30-something woman with a staunch feminist mother. But really why would I?

Simple answer: none of my school textbooks featured much more than two historical women (Harriet Tubman and Elizabeth Cady Stanton). For instance, I didn’t know that Ch’in Liang-Yu (alive during the 1600s) was a famed Chinese writer and super-archer who fought at her husband’s side against the invading Manchus. And that after her husband’s death, she rose to command, and led an army to many victories.

I also wasn’t taught that in September 1883 (a month before the Supreme Court tossed the Civil Rights act aside with the passing of the Jim Crow laws), Ida Wells was thrown off an all white railroad car. For it she filed suit in 1884 and won. It happened again, so she filed suit again and won again.

Nor was I told that Luis Amanda Espinosa (b. 1948 and killed in battle April 3, 1970) was one of the first, and few, working class women to join the FSLN (Sandinista National Liberation Front). She protected a safe-house and provided a secure refuge for underground comrades until she was murdered by government agents in 1970. At the age of 21, Espinosa was the first FSLN woman militant to die in battle. Seven years later, the Nicaraguan Women’s Association was formed and named in her honor.

After years of independent study and research on my own, I have come to know that the these women are but a drop in the historical well-of-information bucket. But I often wonder what my world would be like if, every day, I could open the newspaper or turn on the TV and hear about the miraculous discoveries of women scientists or the courageous acts of women police officers, instead of the constant drabble about which female celebrity is dating whom and how she lost 20 pounds in 20 days.

Sometimes I ask myself, “Would women think about and value themselves differently if they knew—really knew that their heritage (going back hundreds and hundreds of years) consists of inventors, leaders, doctors, scientists, rulers, priests, lecturers, archers, writers, and on and on. Would that change the way they see themselves and perceive the possibilities for their own lives?”

I wonder…