El Triunfo

There’s no better time to sing the following lyrics from Queen Bey(once) herself, “Who run the world? Girls!” than now. Why? Because March is Women’s History Month! From the origins of why we celebrate to the women who got us here, each fun-filled fact we’ve included is a tribute to women’s triumphs in ‘her-story’—er—history. 

1. The first Women’s History Day was held on February 28, 1909

This date commemorated the one-year anniversary of garment workers’ strikes when 15,000 women marched through lower Manhattan, protesting work conditions. 

2. The day turned into a week in 1978

On March 8, 1978, Women’s History Week was kicked off by an education task force in Sonoma County, California, to draw attention to the fact that women’s history wasn’t included in K-12 curriculums. 

3. Women’s History Month began in 1987

After much lobbying by women’s organizations, including the National Women’s History Alliance, Congress finally declared March Women’s History Month.

4. 15-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to give up her bus seat…before Rosa Parks

On March 2, 1955, Colvin had just learned about Black history at school and refused to give up her seat on a bus for a white person in Montgomery, Alabama. Nine months later, Rosa Parks did the same. 

5. Women couldn’t get credit cards on their own until 1974

Until Congress passed the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, women couldn’t get credit cards in their own name without a man to cosign for them. 

6. The right for all women to vote wasn’t granted until 1965

Wyoming Territory led the charge by granting women voting rights in 1869. But the 19th Amendment, which gave voting rights to women—and was signed into law on August 26, 1920—didn’t allow all women to vote. It wasn’t until President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law in 1965 that all women were allowed the right to vote.

7. Geraldyn “Jerrie” Cobb was the first woman to pass astronaut testing in 1961

However, she wasn’t allowed to travel in space because of her gender. Twenty-two years later, Sally Ride became the first woman in space on June 18, 1983, when she flew on the Challenger space shuttle.

Notable numbers

• Women currently hold 25% of the seats in the Senate and 29% in the House.

• 63% of women voted in the 2020 election, compared to 59.5% of men.

• Women comprise 17.5% of active-duty military members and 19.7% of active-duty military officers.

• Eleanor Roosevelt held 348 press conferences specifically for female reporters in 12 years.

• As of 2022, women accounted for 50.7% of the college-educated labor force in the United States.