Celebrate Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day (March 8)

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March Highlights in US Women’s History 

• March 1, 1978 – Women’s History Week is first observed in Sonoma County, California 

• March 1, 1987 – Congress passes a resolution designating March as Women’s History Month 

• March 2, 1903 – the Martha Washington Hotel opens in New York City, becoming the first hotel exclusively for women 

• March 3, 1913 – Women’s Suffrage Parade in Washington, DC, where over 8000 women gathered to demand a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to vote 

• March 4, 1917 – Jeannette Rankin (R-MT) took her seat as the first female member of Congress 

• March 4, 1933 – Frances Perkins becomes United States Secretary of Labor, the first female member of the United States Cabinet 

• March 8 – International Women’s Day, whose origins trace back to protests in the U.S. and Europe to honor and fight for the political rights for working women 

• March 8, 2014 – National Catholic Sisters Weekwww.nationalcatholicsistersweek.orgestablished to raise awareness of the contributions of Catholic sisters 

• March 12, 1912 – Juliette Gordon Low assembled 18 girls together in Savannah, Georgia, for the first-ever Girl Scout meeting 

• March 12, 1993 – Janet Reno is sworn in as the first woman U.S. Attorney General 

• March 13, 1986 – Susan Butcher won the first of 3 straight and 4 total Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Races in Alaska 

• March 17, 1910 – Camp Fire Girls is established as the first interracial, non-sectarian American organization for girls 

• March 17, 1917 – Loretta Perfectus Walsh became the first woman to join the navy and the first woman to officially join the military in a role other than a nurse 

• March 20, 1852 – Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin is published and becomes the bestselling book of the 19th century 

• March 21, 1986 – Debi Thomas becomes first African American woman to win the World Figure Skating Championship 

• March 23, 1917 – Virginia Woolf establishes the Hogarth Press with her husband, Leonard Woolf 

• March 31, 1888 – The National Council of Women of the U.S. is organized by Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton, Julia Ward Howe, and Sojourner Truth, among others, the oldest non-sectarian women’s organization in the U.S. 

• March 31, 1776 – Abigail Adams writes to her husband John who is helping to frame the Declaration of Independence and cautions, “Remember the ladies…” 

(Source:  https://nationalwomenshistoryalliance.org/march/)