March is Women’s History Month which celebrates the role that women have played as history makers in the United States.  Federal recognition started in 1981 with a congressional authorization for the president to proclaim March 7, 1982 as “Women’s History Week.”   By 1995, the designation had expanded to include the whole month of March. 

UTA Libraries provides access to many resources that can help researchers explore the achievements of women in the United States and around the world. Below are just a few highlights from our digital collections including diaries, films, oral history transcripts, and newspaper articles. Stop by the second floor of the Central Library to check out a book display featuring items from the physical collection. If you need assistance accessing these, or any other UTA Libraries resource, reach out to a subject librarian. We are always happy to help.

Hardship and Perseverance

Women past and present have found themselves rising to the occasion in situations they had little control over. These stories resonate with women like film director Kelly Reichardt. Many scholars have identified thematic elements in her films that reflect the experiences of women throughout history. In Highway to Hell? Images of the American road in Kelly Reichardt's "Old Joy", "Wendy and Lucy", and "Meek's Cutoff", author Diarmuid Hester proposes that Reichardt consciously undermines the often masculine American ideal of travel as an act of freedom and mobility.  Hester writes, “If freedom is to be found or created, Reichardt's films suggest that it may not be on the road.”  Meek’s Cutoff can be watched through the database Alexander Street Press Academic Video Online.  Based on a true story and Reichardt's own research into diaries like the one described below, the film explores the tedious daily hardships endured by women traveling the Oregon Trail with their families under the dubious leadership of self-styled “mountain man” Stephen Meek.  While their ability to act is constrained by their social roles and the unforgiving landscape, the women attempt to hold the wagon train together and exert whatever decision making power is granted to them by circumstance.

Thanks to the many real-life women who kept diaries along the Oregon Trail, we can all better understand the high costs that families paid pursuing promises of a better life. The diary of Elizabeth Dixon Geer can be found in the database North American Women’s Letters and Diaries.  Starting in late 1847, Geer traveled the Oregon Trail with her husband and children, the youngest of whom she had to carry.  She writes frequently of natural wonders, but these moments are interspersed with entries describing death, sickness, lost or stolen cattle, broken axles, inadequate shelter, and unfamiliar challenges. She writes, “I used to wonder why it was said that men must be dressed in buckskin to come to this country, but now I know. Everything we travel through is thorny and rough. There is no chance of saving your clothes.”  Geer’s husband died shortly after reaching Oregon. “Today we buried my earthly companion. Now I know what none but widows know; that is, how comfortless is that of a widow's life, especially when left in a strange land, without money or friends, and the care of seven children. Cloudy.”

Telling the Story of Women’s History

There are many women who have made an impact on how we view history, even if their names are not well known.  In the database Women and Social Movements in the United States: 1600-2000, search for “Living US Women’s History” for transcripts from an oral history project.  In an interview conducted in 2001, Heather Huyck describes her path to becoming a public historian working for the National Park Service.  Huyck identifies a turning point in her career in 1977 when she visited a National Park Service site, “…I went into the bookstore, and I looked around, and I said, ‘Your collection of women’s history is really pathetic.’ They said, ‘Well, we don’t know what’s good’…So when I came home for that Christmas break, I spent a lot of time and put together an annotated list of women’s history books that I thought were good for the public and quality scholarship…it really directly led to people telling me about the job there…” Huyck finished her history PhD in 1981 while living in the basement of the historic home at the Clara Barton National Historic Site where she was responsible for generating visitation, creating programs, researching the site, and keeping the roof from leaking, among many other duties. 

Huyck eventually took on a leadership role in the National Park Service creating social and professional organizations for other women historians and helping usher in a new era of interpreting national sites.  In Huyck’s view, women’s history was everywhere, “…the park system is now 383 units. Everything from Constitution Gardens in DC to Yellowstone to Alcatraz, Mesa Verde to Grant Kohrs Ranch. There’s women’s history all over the place.” Summing up her time in the National Park Service, Huyck notes, “The Park Service wondrously finally has shifted much more to a self-consciousness about our educational role, which a whole bunch of us had been waiting about twenty years to see happen…We weren’t supposed to do it. It was sort of education is subversive. You’re just supposed to say here’s the Grand Canyon. Here’s the house. Any questions…some of us have spent our careers trying to say these historic sites have to be told in a context…” including the contexts of slavery, colonial expansion, Indigenous history, and of course, women’s history.  In 2020, she published her book Doing Women’s History in Public: A Handbook for Interpretation at Museums and Historic Sites.

Always independent and strong-willed, Mink’s accomplishments span decades.  When she passed away, mourners in Honolulu organized to form a “human lei of aloha” around the capitol building. This event is documented in the database Asian Life in America, which collects news media related to Asian Americans from hundreds of sources.  More recently, you can read about a 2024 US quarter design featuring Patsy Mink from TellerVision, a trade magazine for bank managers and bank tellers found in the database EBSCO Business Source Complete.

Still Fighting

Women are still fighting to be the first in many ways.  The database Factiva provides access to more than 25,000 news and business sources from 159 countries.  This article from The Guardian published on April 19, 2018 reports reactions to a US Senate rule change allowing senators to bring children under one year old into the chamber during a vote.  What event sparked this change?  Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, the first senator to give birth while in office, had brought her 10-day old baby to the floor so that she could participate in the sometimes hours long voting process.  Duckworth is an Iraq war combat veteran who lost both legs and partial use of her right arm while serving as a US Army helicopter pilot.  She had already made history by being the first Thai American woman elected to Congress, the first woman with a disability elected to Congress, and the first female double amputee in the Senate.  Now she was paving the way for other parents, and especially women with children, to fully participate in the political process. In an earlier interview with The Guardian, she pointed out that such rules demonstrate that different perspectives are still needed, “It’s a reflection of a real need for more women in leadership across our country, whether it’s legislatively or in boardrooms or the military.”

The cover image for this blog article is from the UTA Libraries Fort Worth Star-Telegram Collection.  The caption reads “Mrs. Floyd Campbell solders wires to switches with a tiny iron in a photo from a feature on women who work at General Dynamics. She is one of the many women workers at General Dynamics doing exacting chores. Since World War II women have held factory jobs once considered a man's work. More than 1,700 of the organization's 13,600 employees are women.” Photograph taken April 14, 1965 by Bob Draddy. AR406-6-5077 [Frame 28A]