Women’s history once more, with feeling
by Susan Swartz
Why do we have to keep dredging up women’s history? Why do we need all of March to talk about it? I mean, after all, that was then, this is now.
Can’t we just move on? We’ve got Hillary. We’ve got Nancy. We win Olympic medals. Women make history all the time. Yes, but we still have a couple of thousand years of male-dominated history to balance.
Thirty years ago a group of women in Sonoma County started doing the research on “where were the women?” and strove to do no less than rewrite, edit and fill in the blanks in history books. The Sonoma County Women’s History Project blossomed into the national women’s history project and March became women’s history month, recognized in all states.
One founder of the Women’s History Project was the late Mary Ruthsdotter of Sebastopol. Mary died this winter and her memorial was fittingly planned for this celebrated month. It will be Saturday at 3 p.m. at the Finley Community Center in Santa Rosa.
Mary really knew her history and would talk about the gutsy women of the past like old friends she’d just had over for coffee. One she described as “totally cool” was Jeannette Rankin from Montana, the first woman elected to Congress and who dared to vote against America entering World War I. “You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake,” said Rankin — suffragist, peace activist and Republican.
Bay Area filmmaker Louise Vance claims Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the women’s rights organizer, for her favorite. She tells the story of Stanton growing up and hearing her father, a judge, tell women who were beaten by their husbands that they couldn’t run away.
“The law supported her being recaptured and returned to him,” said Vance, adding that Stanton vowed from then on “to tear out all the pages in her father’s law books that made women cry.”
Vance has made a film called “Seneca Falls” that launches this month on PBS television stations across the country. It’s about America’s first women’s rights convention in 1848, a huge public protest by radicals demanding that women be freed from their social, political and legal slavery. It’s barely mentioned in history books.
The film follows a theater troupe of teenage girls from San Francisco who went to Seneca Falls in 1998 to perform a play at the 150th anniversary of the women’s convention.
When Vance field-tested the film last year she showed it to junior high and high school girls in Ohio. They were angered by what they saw and told Vance they had never spent one minute on women’s history in school. Same thing happened when she showed it to a group of high school girls in San Francisco.
It’s because what women were doing then wasn’t valued enough to be written down. Getting the vote was a huge story but there was so much more going on in terms of women’s rights. “How about the fact that it was once legal in some states to whip your wife,” said Vance.
What about women not being able to inherit property? Or not being allowed to go to college? Mary Ruthsdotter’s grandmother told her, “Some men used to think women belonged to them like their cows and pigs.”
So, yeah, we have to keep acknowledging our history.
And Vance has another idea. She wants to find a legislator who will push for a national bill mandating that women’s history be taught in all public schools.
Imagine the squeals and growls over that idea from those who still haven’t learned how to share.
Susan Swartz is an author and journalist in Sebastopol. You can also read her at www.juicytomatoes.com and hear her Another Voice commentary on KRCB-FM radio on Fridays. Email is susan@juicytomatoes.com.
Can’t we just move on? We’ve got Hillary. We’ve got Nancy. We win Olympic medals. Women make history all the time. Yes, but we still have a couple of thousand years of male-dominated history to balance.
Thirty years ago a group of women in Sonoma County started doing the research on “where were the women?” and strove to do no less than rewrite, edit and fill in the blanks in history books. The Sonoma County Women’s History Project blossomed into the national women’s history project and March became women’s history month, recognized in all states.
One founder of the Women’s History Project was the late Mary Ruthsdotter of Sebastopol. Mary died this winter and her memorial was fittingly planned for this celebrated month. It will be Saturday at 3 p.m. at the Finley Community Center in Santa Rosa.
Mary really knew her history and would talk about the gutsy women of the past like old friends she’d just had over for coffee. One she described as “totally cool” was Jeannette Rankin from Montana, the first woman elected to Congress and who dared to vote against America entering World War I. “You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake,” said Rankin — suffragist, peace activist and Republican.
Bay Area filmmaker Louise Vance claims Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the women’s rights organizer, for her favorite. She tells the story of Stanton growing up and hearing her father, a judge, tell women who were beaten by their husbands that they couldn’t run away.
“The law supported her being recaptured and returned to him,” said Vance, adding that Stanton vowed from then on “to tear out all the pages in her father’s law books that made women cry.”
Vance has made a film called “Seneca Falls” that launches this month on PBS television stations across the country. It’s about America’s first women’s rights convention in 1848, a huge public protest by radicals demanding that women be freed from their social, political and legal slavery. It’s barely mentioned in history books.
The film follows a theater troupe of teenage girls from San Francisco who went to Seneca Falls in 1998 to perform a play at the 150th anniversary of the women’s convention.
When Vance field-tested the film last year she showed it to junior high and high school girls in Ohio. They were angered by what they saw and told Vance they had never spent one minute on women’s history in school. Same thing happened when she showed it to a group of high school girls in San Francisco.
It’s because what women were doing then wasn’t valued enough to be written down. Getting the vote was a huge story but there was so much more going on in terms of women’s rights. “How about the fact that it was once legal in some states to whip your wife,” said Vance.
What about women not being able to inherit property? Or not being allowed to go to college? Mary Ruthsdotter’s grandmother told her, “Some men used to think women belonged to them like their cows and pigs.”
So, yeah, we have to keep acknowledging our history.
And Vance has another idea. She wants to find a legislator who will push for a national bill mandating that women’s history be taught in all public schools.
Imagine the squeals and growls over that idea from those who still haven’t learned how to share.
Susan Swartz is an author and journalist in Sebastopol. You can also read her at www.juicytomatoes.com and hear her Another Voice commentary on KRCB-FM radio on Fridays. Email is susan@juicytomatoes.com.
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