What is Women’s History and why is it important?

March is Women’s History Month. Throughout the month, we will consider how centering women within historical events and processes changes how we think about the past. Teachers are already doing great work to include women in the historical narrative and to encourage students to look for a wider cast of historical actors.  We hope that the following three brief narratives will help students consider why it is important to include women in the way we investigate the past and what it means that women have been left out of so many historical records. Aside from being incomplete, such a record privileges few voices and perspectives as authentic or authoritative. In addition to these short biographies, we included questions to nudge student inquiry, ideas about how you might include these particular women into your class, and teaching resources 

Ban Zhao

Ban Zhao lived in China between 45 and 116 C.E. When her older brother, the court historian Ban Gu, died in 92 C.E., Zhao finished his work. In this history of the Han Dynasty, called the Hanshu, Ban Zhao elevated women’s place in both the court and in the record by adding the genealogy of the mother of the emperor. She went on to write Admonitions (Lessons) for Women, an incredibly popular text that endures today. In Admonitions, Zhao worked within the Confuscian context to advocate for women’s education. By tying education to Confuscian moral responsibility, Zhao found a back door to empower women in a patriarchally organized society. Her legacy, however, is complicated. While some modern feminists consider her to writings as early Confuscian feminism, others consider Admonitions to be the foundational piece that constrained women’s agency for nearly two thousand years. While studying the Early Civilizations of China and the spread of Confucianism and Buddhism, teachers might ask how did the philosophical system of Confucianism support individuals, rulers, and societies, how women used Confucianism to help advance their quality of life,? Why was education so important for women in China? What is Ban Zhao’s legacy and why do some people disagree about its meaning? 

• Ban Zhao teaching materials (Grade 6, HSS Standard 6.6.8)
  • Primary Source
  • Primary Source Analysis Worksheet (Grade 6)
  • Activity (Grade 6)
• Silk Roads (Grade 6, HSS Standard 6.6.7, 8; Inquiry Set)
• Korean Adaptation and Transmission of Chinese Culture and Buddhism (HSS Standard 7.3.1, Grade 7; Inquiry Set)

Elizabeth Key

Elizabeth Key was born to a White father and enslaved Black mother.In 1656, Elizabeth Key sued Virginia for her and her son’s freedom, building her case on English patriarchal custom that the status of the father dictates the status of wives and children. At midcentury, English colonists in America were still developing ideas, practices, and power relations around race. Key’s successful freedom suit shows that Black women could be femmes coverts (the social and legal practice that places women under the protection of husbands and fathers), and that interracial marriage occured within the colony.  Key won her freedom suit and later married her lawyer, a White Virginian. Within a few years of Key’s freedom suit, the Virginia Assembly passed a series of laws that closed the brief openings of opportunities for Black people in America. Two of these laws in particular closed the brief opening that led to Key’s freedom and that of her children: in 1662, Virginia ruled that the status of children follow the mother and in 1691, the Assembly prohibited interracial marriage. When we contextualize her individual case within the larger context of social customs and political decisions, teachers might find Elizabeth Key’s story helpful when addressing the shift toward racial slavery in the American colonies, and help students think about how women used their voices and choices to shape the world. Additionally, we think Key’s story would compliment the following classroom lessons:

• Was slavery always racial? (Grade 7, HSS Standard 7.11; Primary Source Set)
• Slavery in the Colonies (Grade 5, HSS Standard 5.4; Primary Source Set)

Jan O’Herne

In 1942, Japan invaded Java. At nineteen years old, Jan O’Herne, a fourth generation Dutch colonist in Java, entered a Japanese prison camp in one of the many battlefields of the Pacific Theater of World War II. Two years later, Japanese officers selected Jan along with nine other girls. Jan and the other girls were imprisoned in a brothel, renamed with Japanese names, and forced to serve as sex slaves for the Japanese military. While imprisoned, these women fought their imprisonment and exploitation by attempting to escape, shaving their heads, declaring their human rights under the Geneva Convention. They overtly asserted their humanity by declaring their rights under the Geneva Convention. Meanwhile, the “Comfort Women” covertly reclaimed their personhood in small acts of defiance like embroidering their birth name onto a secret handkerchief. Most of these women struggled after the war, returning to their communities with cultural shame, mental trauma, and physical scars. Decades later, in 1992, Ms. Kim Hak Sun broke the Comfort Women’s silence. She inspired Jan O’Herne and many others to come forward and advocate for justice restitution from the Japanese government. Jan testified alongside the other victims at  the  International  Public  Hearing  on  Japanese  War  Crimes  in  Tokyo  in December 1992, and revealed to the world one of the worst human rights abuses of World War II. When educators discuss World War II, they might use this resource to ask their students how the experience of gender shaped decisions in war and peace, or what 

• “Comfort Women” (Grade 10, HSS Standard 10.8: Students analyze the causes and consequences of World War II)

In sharing these brief biographies, we hope to help educators as they communicate a more complex and textured history with their students. Ban Zhao, Elizabeth Key, and Jan O’Herne help us move past the one-dimensional stories and are examples of how women made choices that defy our inclination to characterize them as a hero, villain, or victim. They are examples of how studying women’s history pushes us to think more deeply about the meaning of the past and ask different questions. For more resources to support your teaching throughout Women’s History Month, take a look at our Monthly Highlights page. Here, you’ll find recent scholarly work, picture books, and teaching resources.