Women's History Month

Here is some good news: there is no three step formula to being a Peacebuilder, the world can be changed in thousands of creative, unique ways. One option: in light of the growing power of outside interests in your town you can walk door to door to simply make your neighbors more aware. A second option: because some laws take advantage of low income workers you can work with local agencies to create new laws that keep them in mind. Another option: because art is so powerful but is being forgotten you could create a network of artists with the city in order to create a more beautiful world.

All of the above options for changing the world and so many more have been carried out by women in our country, and that is why we honor them and others this March during National Women's History Month. This year our country honors the countless women throughout history who sought to change their communities like Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King who passed away in the last six months, and specifically ten women who are currently living this mission of change.

Though our nation began celebrating Women's History Month in 1987, women have obviously been making history throughout all history. The names Eleanor Roosevelt, Dorothy Day, Maya Angelou, Elizabeth Ann Seaton, and Sandra Day O'Connor need no explanation because of their powerful lives. And their legacy is being carried on by women and girls today (the three examples above are from the real lives of Juana Gutierrez, Cindy Marano, and Marian Van Landingham some of 2006's honorees). Certainly carrying their banner is Tyrnae Lawson who at age 13 recently preached her first sermon in Saginaw, MI. When asked she stated her influences as, "My great-grandfather, my great-grandmother, my mother and my mentor, E. Yvonne Lewis," yet another testimony to the influence of women.

Catholic Connection:

"Women have contributed to that history as much as men and, more often than not, they did so in much more difficult conditions... Women will increasingly play a part in the solution of the serious problems of the future: leisure time, the quality of life, migration, social services, euthanasia, drugs, health care, the ecology, etc. In all these areas a greater presence of women in society will prove most valuable, for it will help to manifest the contradictions present when society is organized solely according to the criteria of efficiency and productivity, and it will force systems to be redesigned in a way which favors the pro- cesses of humanization which mark the "civilization of love."
--Pope John Paul II, Letter to Women 1995

Reflection Questions

Who is a woman in your own life who has influenced you, and why?

Join us in our Forum to discuss these questions!