Taking the Girls for a Day Without Women…
We were nervous — not for ourselves, but for the men we left behind. They’re great men. We knew in our hearts they would be fine, but as women we could feel our traditional, stereotypical roles to provide, and solve, and organize pulling us back into the building as we forced ourselves to walk away. We stood strong. And, to their credit, the men shooed us out the door, reassuring us that it would, indeed, be okay, and completely supported our opportunity to show #ourgirls how to engage civically. We had 55 girls in tow and we had a point to prove. As educators, we so rarely get the opportunity to take these moments in history and show our students how to participate, and allow them to do so. It was an amazing opportunity and one I think our girls will not forget.
We started at the Sewall-Belmont House. It’s worth noting that this house only became a national monument under President Obama on April 12, 2016. Prior to this, there wasn’t a real monument to women in history in Washington, D.C., other than the Daughters of the American Revolution museum, which unfortunately, was not going to serve the purpose of investing our multi-cultural and racially diverse group of girls in women’s history in this country. The American History Museum has some wonderful side exhibits and a large one on dresses first ladies wore. Given the point we had to prove, this was absolutely not going to cut it. As we planned and researched educational opportunities for #ourgirls to take in during the strike, we realized very quickly that our country on the whole, D.C. included, does not have much in the way of honoring women. The newness of this monument became very apparent as we walked around the house with the girls and saw not a single female of color represented in the building. The house was old. Some rooms were still empty as they were trying to figure out what they were going to do with their new space. Our park ranger was profusely apologetic as he glanced out at his all minority audience full of inquisitive girls who kept asking where the women were that looked like them. We learned about the racially segregated underbelly of a movement that I had always taken great pride in. It seemed that our women leaders of the 1920’s felt they could only climb one mountain at a time and asked that women of color not participate as they tried to earn the right to vote lest they isolate the Southern States. As a history teacher, I found this fascinating; as a white woman I was a little crushed.
Our next stop was lunch, which ended up being one of the most relaxing lunches I have had at school to date. We made our way with our trays of sandwiches to the steps of the Capitol and plopped all 65 of us down to eat lunch. The girls were great — even as the Capitol Police hunched over us from not quite a far enough distance that we all didn’t notice. It was sunny. We laughed. We took pictures. We talked about walking into the Capitol as a group of minority women and what that would have meant to some of our students’ ancestors. 1920 and 1965 are not far enough in the past yet. Much like they had in the Sewall-Belmont House, the girls found themselves asking tour guides where the African-American women were. We all gathered around the statue of Rosa Parks sitting in a statue hall along with Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee amongst others and paused. This was it. In our Day Without Women, we found out how much D.C. is constantly without women. We are under recognized for our achievements and underrepresented in our government. Some of our students found this frustrating, and others found it empowering. I found it illuminating. I came to school the next day and listened to the men joke about how they missed us, and were lost without us (they were fine…mostly), and amidst the reflections, I found that my spark for doing what I do every day was a little bit brighter. I got into conversation with male students about why the day was important to me.
1920 was a long time ago, 1965 less so. But we are not there yet and we still have so much to do.
Below is a link to some of the photos we took on the day!
