March is Women’s History Month—but how much do we think about women’s history? There are no parades, few monuments, no national holidays (Mother’s Day, falling as it does on a Sunday, has never been declared a federal holiday), and little coverage in primary and secondary education.
And 2020 is a big year for women’s history: it’s the centennial of women’s suffrage in the United States. As a group, women have had the constitutional right to vote for 100 years.
In recent years, Americans have grappled with the question of whether they are ready to elect a woman president. Delving into the varied histories of women can help us answer such a question, and that’s worth doing. In part, the answer lies in that more subtle and powerful landscape of everyday life and in our expectations and…