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March is Women’s History Month, a time to celebrate women and their accomplishments. We’re highlighting women at Cal State East Bay, their work, their stories and their understanding of women's history. 

Adriana Contreras, transfer student and psychology major 

What is your understanding of Women’s History Month? What does it mean to you?

Women’s history month, to me, means recognizing the success, innovation and nonconformity of the women around us and throughout history. Women face many stereotypes that can get ingrained into our minds until we learn that women can accomplish great things, that they are just as capable and equal as men are. Celebrating Women’s History Month means that young girls all over the world will learn that they can do anything they set their mind to, without limits.

Has your time at East Bay shown you anything new about women’s history?

Yes! I had the opportunity to work with the librarians at the CORE as a library student ambassador and learned so much during Women’s History Month. During Women’s History Month at the CORE, I got the chance to choose books that reflected on the many achievements women throughout history accomplished and put them up in a display to catch people’s attention. It was nice to see some grab a book or two!

Is there anything you’d like to know about Women’s History Month?

Definitely. I’d really like to know more about the hidden figures in women’s history. I feel like they’re not recognized enough. An example would be Cathay Williams who was the only documented woman to serve (and the first Black woman to enlist) in the U.S. Army, under the name “William Cathay.” There are many more hidden figures that come to mind, but I’d love to know about women in history that are too often overshadowed!

Is there a woman you wish to highlight for Women’s History Month? 

I’d like to highlight my grandmother. She came to the United States at such a young age and persevered through extreme hardships to provide for the big, beautiful family she created. She’s someone who has taught me firsthand how powerful and capable women are. 

Heather Gardley, Director of the Office of Student Conduct 

How does an understanding of women’s history factor into your work?

I don’t know if it necessarily has a role to play in the work I do now in Student Conduct, but in some of the work I did previously, most recently in Student Life, that was an office solely run by women, women professionals. It was always great to be in an environment with really strong, motivated and opinionated women that knew how to get the job done and were all about service to the students and the campus community. We worked really well together which is nice.

Do you have any recommendations for clubs who want to recognize Women's History Month?

I think that there's a lot of opportunities for student clubs and organizations to engage the campus community around Women's History Month. Specifically, there's always opportunities for students to highlight women on campus, faculty members, staff members, and even other undergraduates or graduate students. I think that there's an opportunity to collaborate with groups or organizations outside of the campus as well to engage them and to bring them on campus. They can host a speaker series, they can have workshops, they can seek to illuminate organizations that do service. So if they are a service based organization like some of our fraternities and sororities, where that's a value or you know, a large component of their mission, there's opportunities for them to get out in the field and do that work and contribute to organizations that directly serve and support women.

An example of something clubs can do, using the Phi Alpha Theta, the history honor society:

Even a club like that, an honor society, I mean that's a great opportunity as well, right? Especially with history, to have that direct tie in you're already associated with history as a discipline, but having that focus on women you know for this particular month or even all year round, right? It doesn't only have to be March.

Is there a woman you wish to highlight for Women’s History Month?

I would like to highlight my friend and mentor Dr. Andrea Wilson. She was an associate vice president at Cal State East Bay until about two years ago and then she went to the community college level. While we worked together here at East Bay she really played an instrumental role in helping to develop me as a professional and really mentor me around just different scenarios and situations that I would come up against and help coach me through those things so that I could be successful. Even since she's left East Bay, we're still in contact and we still have our professional and personal relationship. I really value her, her feedback and advice as a mentor and I wish that others could have a strong mentor as I did in her.

Paige Luben, President of the Alumni Association

What affected your decision to join the Alumni Association?

In the very beginning, I saw the application pop up and I was just super excited for the opportunity to reconnect really with the university, and by reconnect, I mean connected at all. As a student, I definitely was not involved so that was really what kind of drew me in, but just overall just really happy to serve and give back to the community. I love doing things that can make, you know, hopefully, a positive impact. 

Do you use what you learned about women's history in your life now?

I think it's sort of similar to the last one, it's like, intuitively, you know? Not so much other than just giving me that framework. As well as, of course, all the contributions of women in the past to really allow for me to go to university and have a job and to progress in my career and all those things. So not so much specifically history in general, but what women have done.

What do you hope that other students now would take from women's history?

It's just about taking the time and the space like in life or in your day or whatever it is throughout the month just to really you know think about all the things that have happened that brought us here. To really celebrate where we're at but also continue on that journey. I know we're not quite as extreme as back then but still, I mean in the workplace, in relationships, and things like that there still are discrepancies. We're not right there yet so there are still definitely things to work on. Like a work in progress.

Is there a woman you wish to highlight for Women’s History Month?

From my industry, and just when I was a kid who I always kind of looked up to, and then as I've become an adult and follow folks more, it's really the women CEOs. So you know, the CEO of 23andMe, the CEO of Oracle was a woman. Then my favorite one is the one that founded Bumble, Whitney Wolfe Herd, she was subjected to some things and started her own company. So those are the kind of women that have always really inspired me.

Jessica Weiss, history professor and author of multiple publications on gender in the United States

Has your work changed the meaning of Women’s History Month for you?

I started my graduate studies the same year as the first Women's History Month. I could embark on the study of US Women's History in graduate school in part because it was already a vital field of study with 19 years of excellent scholarship to draw on. So, in some ways, the declaration of the month for study, reflection, and appreciation of women's contributions was more than a little delayed. As a historian specializing in the teaching and researching of US Women's History, I can say that I'm a bit ambivalent about Women's History Month. It's a great way to spread awareness and knowledge about women's history, but it begs the question: "What happens to interest in Women's History the rest of the year? So, although I am glad for the attention to women's lives and experiences each March, I worry that it's not a subject given much thought the rest of the year. Of course classes in women's history are happening every semester on college campuses across the US and scholarship is being created and published year-round. Ideally, we would be able to sustain attention in US Women's History year-round.

What is the most important thing you think people should understand about women's history?

It's important to understand that conventional historical research methods conscribed our understanding of women's contributions and experiences and therefore shaped perspectives on women's present and future status based on incomplete knowledge. Women's history isn't just about identifying a handful of female greats to celebrate; it involves applying new approaches and methods to historical study and investigating nontraditional sources through a feminist lens. It means being inclusive of the diverse groups of women who lived in the past. Studying women's history transforms our understanding of history, completing what had been an incomplete picture.

What do you hope people get from your work and the work of other historians on women’s history? 

One of the contributions of the first decade and a half of women's history scholarship was the understanding that gender is historically constructed, that is, that it has changed over time. This idea was still new in 1987 when historian Joan Scott wrote an article surveying contemporary historical theory and practice but is now widely accepted among historians and other scholars. This concept helped create the history of masculinity as a field and taught us that both manhood and womanhood have transformed across the centuries and also that there has been variation across race, class, region, and ethnicity, and that individuals have found ways to define themselves within and outside the seemingly fixed categories of gender. Beyond the understanding of unsung heroes and past experiences, I would hope women's historians and historians of gender might contribute to a greater understanding of the fluidity of gender past and present and that this might help to mitigate what lately seems to be a climate shaped by ignorance, intolerance and hate.

Is there a woman you wish to highlight for Women’s History Month?

I would like for anyone reading this to take one action to ensure that the history of at least one of the women in their lives isn't lost. Look through a family photo album and make sure the women (and men) in the photographs are identified. Ask for the story behind a family heirloom. Email a relative and ask questions about their education, career paths, and social or political activities. Take a mentor to coffee and find out whether sexism shaped their experiences and how they found the support they needed to survive and thrive. Make a time capsule about women's lives today, collecting information about gendered pay scales, reproductive rights, political representation and cultural clout. We need to democratize collecting, recording, and noticing women's history. I'd like to see this question inspire anyone reading this to highlight someone who without their action would remain hidden from history. Currently, I'm thinking about a friend who just celebrated her 95th birthday and who is the last living member of a friend group of five women that met annually beginning when they graduated from high school. I think there is a story there worth learning about friendship, the life cycle, motherhood, education and work.