By YOLOTZIN FRANCO, NEWS3 Reporter
MACOMB, Illinois (NEWS3) — Women have been doing things in their lives that need recognition, and the month of March celebrates Women’s History Month.
Women’s history month wasn’t always a month. It began as March 8 being International Women’s day, when former President Jimmy Carter declared that week to be recognized as Women’s History Week. Many women at that time wanted to make Women’s History Week longer. In 1987, Congress expanded women’s history week to a month.
“A lot of the things women did to contribute to the success of this country were not considered important,” Western Illinois University Professor in Women Studies Lori Baker Sperry said. “Women have been doing important and necessary things and we happened to put enough emphasis on those things because of this month.”
This month not only recognizes important women figures throughout history, but all women, no matter the race, age and country of origin.
Sperry graduated in 1997 and began teaching at WIU in 1999. Twenty years later, she is still teaching the same things that she was taught.
“It was my firm belief that I was teaching about as a professor of women’s studies that those issues would change,” Sperry said. “Hopefully, they’d be much smaller issues, but really quite honestly, the same things I taught 20 years ago are the same things I am still teaching.”
Sperry believes women’s history month is a month to move forward and try to find solutions to the issues that are still going on today.
