Celebrate International Women's Day With Me!

Celebrate International Women's Day With Me!

Did you know that women use 20,000 words a day while men only use 7,000?

March is Women’s History Month. I still don’t understand why it isn’t women’s herstory month, but I’m doing everything I can to change that. Language is very important, as we 20,000-a-day women know. It’s the only tool we have to claim our power short of shouting. That’s why we tell our kids to “Use your words!”

Meanwhile, I’ll just keep ranting. According to the national women’s history project, before 1970, women's history was rarely the subject of serious study.

As historian Mary Beth Norton recalls, "only one or two scholars would have identified themselves as women's historians, and no formal doctoral training in the subject was available anywhere in the country." Since then, the landscape has changed dramatically. Today almost every college offers women's history courses and most major graduate programs offer doctoral degrees in the field.

I personally dream of the day when "Maternal Studies" has as much credibility inside and outside academia as "Women’s Studies" has come to represent.

Some progress has been made with regard to this. See the International Mothers Network (IMN), the first ever global consortium of motherhood organizations, officially launches on International Woman's Day (March 8, 2009) in cities around the world.

That about does it for my 200 words out of 20,000 today here at FWW. Oh, BTW, FWW is part of International Mothers Network. Roar!