Introduction
Since 1980, women's history has been celebrated nationally in the month of March. In honor of Women's History Month, JWA calls attention to the pioneering work of activist historian Gerda Lerner, who created the field of women's history and helped launch its national commemoration. Developed as an innovative and fun way to create equality in classrooms and challenge stereotypes about women's roles in history, Women's History Month has become a nation-wide celebration that brings the stories of ordinary and extraordinary women into thousands of schools and communities and provides resources and inspiration for learning about women's history throughout the year.

Gerda Lerner with landmark sign designating
Sarah Lawrence College the home of the
first graduate program in women's history.
Photo: Courtesy Gerda Lerner

Gerda Lerner and the origins of Women's History Month
When Gerda Lerner went back to school at age 38 to study history in the late 1950s, there were no women's studies departments, women's history courses were not included in the curriculum, and entire courses were taught with little or no mention of women's experiences and contributions. "People didn't think that women had a history worth knowing," Lerner recalls.

A radical student in Nazi-occupied Austria and an activist working against McCarthyism and for African-American's civil rights in the 1940s and 50s, Lerner was no stranger to the battle for social change. She was determined to uncover a different kind of history, one that would place marginalized people at the center of the narrative.

President Carter's Proclamation
of the first National Women's
History Week, March 2-8, 1980.

Without knowledge of their history, Lerner believed, women could not imagine their capacity for full participation in the world. So in 1963, while still an undergraduate, Lerner developed one of the first women's history courses in the nation. Throughout her career, she has continued to break ground, developing and directing the first graduate program in women's history at Sarah Lawrence College and one of the first doctoral programs in women's history at the University of Wisconsin. Earlier than most of her colleagues, Lerner understood the importance of studying race and class; her 1972 anthology Black Women in White America was for many years the only available teaching text on African-American women's history.

Lerner has also influenced an audience beyond the academy through community projects such as the 1979 Summer Institute in Women's History for Leaders of Women's Organizations. This 15-day course brought together a diverse group of women. As a group project, the institute members adopted the goal of "making the celebration of Women's History Week a national event." After months of local and national lobbying, they secured a joint resolution of Congress and the approval of President Jimmy Carter, and the first national Women's History Week was celebrated in 1980. Women's History Week brought forth such a wealth of programs in so many schools, universities, and communities that the observance was expanded into Women's History Month in 1987.

In her autobiography, Fireweed (2002), Lerner describes the significant impact of the 1979 Institute and its successful group project. She admits that "in all the years of my life as an American radical I influenced very few people and changed society very little. By contrast, the 1979 Institute took as its class project making Women's History Month a national annual event. The project… helped create one of the biggest grassroots history movements in the country, which affected and involved tens of thousands of people." This Month - and every Month - we celebrate Gerda Lerner's ongoing impact as a women's history pioneer.

How to Cite This Page
Jewish Women's Archive. "JWA - Womens History Month - Gerda Lerner." <http://jwa.org/discover/throughtheyear/march/lerner/index.html>.