on feeling relegated

Lauren Daley had “mixed feelings” when she learnt about Women’s History Month as a child. “Part was embarrassment, almost shame, to be a girl,” she writes at the Boston Globe. “If there’s no special need for ‘Men’s History Month’ – doesn’t that just mean” that boys get “all 12”, she wondered. The month “has always felt to me like a pat on the head, a slice of pink cake, a generic Hallmark card… from the white patriarchy”. Daley understands “certain cultures have their own specific histories and cultures that bind them when we celebrate these months”, but “each March, we corral half a planet… to tell us… We matter despite?” She continues: “It’s not that we shouldn’t celebrate Women’s history, or Black history, or Indigenous People’s Month or any people – it’s that no group deserves to feel relegated to four weeks a year”. As she says: “That’s not inclusivity. That’s isolation.” You’ll find the names of Harriet Tubman, Aretha Franklin, Eleanor Roosevelt and Maya Angelou when you google Women’s History Month Figures, says Daley, but these women “didn’t shape ‘women’s history’ – they shaped human history”.