While March may be known as the month when crocuses poke up in snowy lawns, it is also National Women’s History Month. International Women’s Day also took place on Thursday, March 8. Thanks to these holidays, women are being remembered and celebrated on EMU’s campus.

During her chapel lecture Wednesday morning, President Susan Shultz Huxman gave a brief history of National Women’s History Month. According to Huxman, this holiday was first celebrated in 1978 in Sonoma County, California; it did not become nationally recognized until 1981 and did not become a whole month until 1987.

Huxman noted that “2017-2018 has been quite a year for women … a year of resisting, a year of reckoning, a year of rollbacks, and a year of resilience. In short, women have been on the move.” She mentioned the political climate that led to the Women’s Marches, recent books and movies featuring strong female characters, and the fact that women are still paid 78 cents for every dollar that men earn. Professor of English Marti Eads also mentioned how social media posts about the Women’s Marches and the #MeToo movement have made her much more aware of March’s women-related holidays than she ever has been before.

Junior Xhorxhina Ndoka said that International Women’s Day is important to her because she is far away from her mother and it gives her a chance to remember who she is as a woman and what she hopes to accomplish. Back in Albania, Ndoka’s home, she would have celebrated International Women’s Day by going out to lunch with her mother and her sister. She would also have bought a gift and some flowers for her mother.

Librarian Jennifer Ulrich said that in Romania, where her neighbor Sheri Hartzler is currently living, the celebration of International Women’s Day is very similar to America’s celebration of Mother’s Day. For Ulrich personally, it is also a chance to celebrate women’s involvement in education, economic growth, and leadership. However, Ulrich also looks forward to the day when women, who make up at least half of the world’s population, are no longer viewed as a minority and no longer need a day or a month to be recognized. She looks forward to the day when women actually make up half of Congress and Senate; the day when girls have equal opportunities for education, and the day when women leaders are no longer viewed as anomalies in their communities.

“So, as they say, we’ve come a long way, baby, but there’s still a long way to go, and that’s why we must continue to tell the stories of women,” Huxman said. She shared the stories of Angelina Grimké, Anna Howard Shaw, and Ida B. Wells. Grimké was a vehement abolitionist and public speaker in the days when women were not supposed to address men. Shaw was also a public speaker and the first woman ordained as a Methodist preacher, who also had a physician’s degree and an amazing comic flair. Her goal was women’s suffrage and she spoke in every state in the United States as well as many foreign countries, but died before the 19th Amendment was passed. Wells was an African American who refused to give up her seat long before Rosa Parks ever did, and even bit a conductor who tried to move her. It took three men to finally get her to move and she ended up successfully suing the railroad company. However, Wells did not stop there. She went on to become a pioneer in the field of investigative journalism, where she railed against Jim Crow laws and the practice of lynching, and cofounded the NAACP.

Eads also remembered the historical figures that inspired her as a young girl: Annie Oakley, Louisa May Alcott, and Harriet Tubman. Although she lamented that she had no female mentors when she went through grad school and college, she values her current female colleagues, especially Mary Nation Thiessen, who teaches at the seminary. Next year she will be teaching a women’s literature class, entitled “Rooms of Their Own,” based on the feminist perspective of another woman hero, Virginia Woolf, and Anabaptist wisdom.

While she has no specific historical women heroes, Ulrich honors the women in her life who are friends, leaders, pastors, professors, and librarians. These include locals like Jennifer Davis Sensenig, pastor of Community Mennonite Church, and Nancy Heisey, a professor in EMU’s Bible and Religion Department. Ulrich also honors the mission of Ten Thousand Villages and other organizations that give work to women so that they can afford education. According to Ulrich,“When women are educated, their lives are different.” Ulrich’s viewpoint on National Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day brings the focus back to the history that women are making here and now.

As President Huxman declared in chapel, quoting Bella Abzug, “Women have been trained to speak softly and carry a lipstick. Those days are over.”