March is Women's History Month

Since 1987, March has been proclaimed National Women's History Month in the United States. March 8 has also been observed  as International Women's Day since the early 1900s, born out of the suffrage movements of that era. Learn more about women's history by delving into the wealth of materials the Bentley Library and the Internet have on the topic!

Starting places on the library's website include our research guides on both Gender Issues and History, which will point you toward key databases, books, videos, and websites in those areas. Take a look at the Women's Studies section of one of our latest databases, Films on Demand, to see videos ranging from a history of women at West Point to speeches given by key figures in women's rights to a full-length PBS film on the introduction of birth control.

Our library catalog is packed with books, films, and electronic documents about women's history; this is just a sampling:

• Books on women in different eras such as America's founding and the civil rights movement
• biographies of women from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to groundbreaking computer scientist Grace Hopper to Olympic athlete Marion Jones
• Feminist classics like The Feminine Mystique, Sisterhood is Powerful, and Manifesta
• Subject search for "Women" (includes 3723 subjects!)
• Materials on women and education (2012's National Women's History Month theme is "Women's Education - Women's Empowerment")

Meanwhile, Bentley's Women's Center has its own library of books. Search it right from the Bentley Library's catalog, or stop by LaCava 120 to browse for yourself. Keep your women's history local by keeping up with the Women's Center on Twitter and Facebook, and look for events on Her Campus Bentley, too. Also locally, you may want to check out the centennial events going on this year at Orchard House in Concord, historic home of writer Louisa May Alcott and her family. More information can be found in this Boston Globe article.* Learn more about Women's History Month at the websites of the National Women's History Project and womenshistorymonth.gov, both of which contain images, histories, and chances to test your knowledge. The photos on this page came from a Library of Congress Flickr set called "Women Striving Forward, 1910s-1940s."  

*(Thanks for the tip, Barb!)