Women’s History Month became an annual national month starting in 1981. To broadcast women’s historical achievements, Molly Murphy MacGregor, Mary Ruthsdotter, Maria Cuevasm Paula Hammett and Bette Morgan founded the National Women’s History Project (NWHP), in Santa Rosa, California. It has been started to designate March as National Women’s History Month and is now celebrated across the world. Each year, the month consists of a theme. The theme for 2022 is “Providing Healing, Promoting Help.”

The theme had been decided as a tribute to caregivers and frontline workers during the ongoing pandemic. Women have been perceived to be healers since ancient times. The theme is promoting the importance of healers and caregivers that help promote and sustain hope for the future.

“I feel that Women’s History Month is a huge reminder to everyone of the challenges that women have experienced and are still facing today,” senior Alexis Rinere said.

In everyone’s personal lives, the National Women’s History Alliance works to speak on stories about the women in our lives and the challenges they have faced. The impact of women’s lives has been a vital piece in history. In the past, children, and many adults, believed that women did nothing important. Therefore, little girls had very few role models.

“I feel like we all really need some healing in our lives, whether it be our inner self or just our lives in general,” senior Emily Frashure said.

In the sense of needing healing in nations’ lives, women have been promoting and supplying compassion within healing for centuries. Honoring female caregivers and frontline workers, women have amazed humanity in more ways than known.  

Women as counselors, clerics, artists, teachers, doctors, nurses, mothers and grandmothers are honored and recognized for their hope and healing. Historically, mending divisions, healing wounds and finding solutions that are peaceful has been led by women. It has been seen that a large percentage of the health care workers are women.

Going along with hope and healing, during more recent years, there has been hope with abortion rights. Although there have been setbacks, women are soon inching closer to full freedoms with their bodies. Abortion activist Pat Maginnis, born in 1928, had campaigned that birth control, despite legal restrictions, and many abortion clinics support pregnant women who did not have many places to turn. Rights for abortion has been an ongoing battle for decades. Maginnis had campaigned for reproductive rights for women everywhere, whether it be a form of birth control or abortion rights.

Clara Barton was among the most famous nurses. Born in 1821, Barton arrived in the middle of a battle during the Civil War with a cart filled with medical supplies to aid wounded soldiers on both sides of the battle. Barton had taught herself nursing before formal nursing education had become a thing. The American Red Cross, providing emergency assistance and disaster relief still today, was founded in 1871 by Barton while running the Office of Missing Soldiers.

With all of these amazing women in society, it is somehow forgotten the impact some of these women have made on society as a whole. During this ongoing pandemic, women have endlessly provided comfort and support within hoping and healing to their families. Mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, nieces and allwoman work to achieve hope and healing for their families and their communities each day. Women are amazing, and their work may even be under acknowledged.