Taking the Kids: And learning about amazing women

Do you know any amazing women? March is the time to celebrate them – and many others you may not have heard of. Since 1987, March has been deemed National Women’s History Month to recognize the accomplishments of women in U.S. history who have often been overlooked.

This is the time to tell your mother, your grandmother, your godmother or favorite teacher why you think they are amazing.

Invite the favorite women in your life on a women-only trip like those offered by Backroads or Insight Vacations. Uniworld has just announced a Women-Only Cruise this summer in France (Aug. 24) that will include specially curated activities and comedian Rachel Dratch, best known for her time on “Saturday Night Live”.

Invite them along as you discover other amazing women. Challenge your kids to consider why women often have been overlooked in history, though obviously they have always been here. Did you know more than 30 percent of all businesses today are run by women? That women were accepted in colleges as far back as 1772?

For every woman who is celebrated, there are others who inspired her.

For example, a new book “Women’s Crusader,” by historian R. Lee Wilson, chronicles the accomplishments of Catharine (Kate) Beecher, the younger sister of acclaimed abolitionist and author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Kate Beecher fought for women’s education.

Another new book, “Jane Austen’s Bookshelf,” by Rebecca Romney, highlights how many terrific women writers influenced Austen’s work but aren’t known today. This year marks the 250th anniversary of Jane Austin’s birth with celebrations throughout the year and new exhibits at Jane Austen’s House in Chawton, Hampshire, England. Travel back to 1816. The new permanent exhibition Jane Austen and the Art of Writing is now open as is Austenmania! (Book in advance.)

Remind the kids of the many, many contributions women have made. Start at the National Park Service’s Travel Where Women Made History website and at the many national historic sites that focus on women’s history. Just be mindful that the National Park Service staff cuts that President Trump has ordered may impact programming.

Visit the Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historic Park in Richmond, California, and explain to the kids how during World War II, millions of women who previously weren’t encouraged to take jobs outside the home suddenly found themselves pitching in for the war effort by holding down highly skilled technical roles in factories, shipyards and more when men went off to war. Rosie’s story traces its roots to a 1942 song celebrating the fictional factory worker Rosie, who embodied the collective effort of these women. Though many women gave up these jobs after the war – whether they wanted to or not – Rosie’s image flexing a muscle, red bandana on her head, and the “We Can Do It” slogan became iconic in later years as women fought for the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

In Maryland, visit Clara Barton’s home and learn about the woman who founded the American Red Cross and led humanitarian efforts around the world (Also check out this virtual exhibit.)

Many don’t realize how many women played pivotal roles during the Klondike Gold Rush in Alaska in 1897-98. Some were wives who joined their husbands. Others, like Annie Hall Strong, were journalists (she wrote “advice for women” in a Skagway, Alaska, newspaper), shopkeepers, cooks, hotel proprietors and more. Harriet Pullen started baking pies and eventually owned a Skagway hotel while Kate Carmack’s discovery kicked off the gold rush in 1896. Learn more at the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park in Skagway, Alaska, (a popular summer cruise ship port).

Explore the role Black women played in the fight for universal suffrage in the 19th and 20th centuries, organizing and marching, and in their continuing efforts. In Washington, DC, visit the Mary McLeod Bethune Council House, the first headquarters of the National Council of Negro Women. A well-known educator and confidant of Eleanor Roosevelt and adviser to President Franklin D.Roosevelt, McLeod Bethune worked to better the lives of Black women through better educational opportunities and jobs. She is also the focus of the first exhibition in the Forces for Change gallery at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

(Bethune was played by Oprah Winfrey in the“Six Triple Eight” Netflix film that documents how the only U.S. Women’s Army Corps unit of color stationed overseas takes on and succeeds at what was thought to be an impossible mission – get more than 17 million pieces of mail to US soldiers fighting abroad.

At art museums, look for exhibits that showcase women artists. See “All Day All Night,” the art of Christine Sun Kim at the Whitney Museum of American Art until July 6. Her work explores sound, language and how we communicate. Opening in April at SFMOMA (and then traveling to MoMA in New York and overseas) "Ruth Asawa, a Retrospective,” presents her groundbreaking work from drawing to sculpture and insight into her family life that included her time as a young woman displaced to an internment camp during World War II, along with many others of Japanese heritage.

At the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery, the “We Gather at the Edge: Contemporary Quilts by Black Women Artists" celebrates the Black story-quilt tradition while at the National Museum of American History “Latinas Report Breaking News” celebrates Latina journalists in the broadcast industry. Later this year, Recent Acquisitions at the National Portrait Gallery will focus on portraits of women or portraits made by women artists.

Just remember that most women don’t get a historic site or a museum retrospective to celebrate their achievements. A simple thank you would be nice.

========

(For more Taking the Kids, visit www.takingthekids.com and also follow TakingTheKids on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram where Eileen Ogintz welcomes your questions and comments. The fourth edition of The Kid’s Guide to New York City and the third edition of The Kid’s Guide to Washington D.C. are the latest in a series of 14 books for kid travelers published by Eileen.)