Women's History Month 2013: March Celebrates Women in STEM

Impact

March marks "Women's History Month." This year's theme is “Women Inspiring Innovation through Imagination: Celebrating Women in Science, Math, Technology, Engineering and Mathemetics.” 

This year’s efforts are to focus on promoting STEM (science, technology, engineering, and Math) programs for women and encouraging younger women who are interested in these fields to pursue their dreams. There are multiple events and workshops being held in order to inform and engage youth about opportunities within these areas, and this is great given how few women work in scientific fields.

Here is a video that explains a little more in depth what women have done in science:

Even though the focus is on women of science, you cannot forget the women in the suffrage movement, women in World War II and many other important things women have done throughout history.

Women's History Month spawned from a small-town event in California. The origins to become nationally recognized happened when Congress passed Pub L97-28 proclaiming the week of March 7, 1982 “Women’s History Week.” The next 5 yearsOver the next five years, Congress passed resolutions to continue on L97-28. In 1987, the National Women's History Project pushed for March 1987 as “Women’s History Month.” Since then, presidents have continued passing resolutions to recognize March as “Women’s History Month.”

Of course, a lot of you might wonder why we don't celebrate men in a Men's History Month and that this is reverse discrimination. But to be perfectly honest, most of history is told from a man's perspective anyway, which was why there was a need have a recognition of women's history.

Opinions aside, it is good that we recognize people for their achievements. It's important to recognize any person — regardless of their race, sex, gender, religion, sexual orientation, political affiliation, and any other category — for their accomplishments.