THE
VALUE OF
WOMEN SPECIAL REPORT
HISTORY
women’s and girl’s organizations.
“All of our exhibits are very diverse,” she says,
“and carefully calculated to ensure [the inclusion
of ] women from all ethnic backgrounds in American
history.” To ensure visitors “don’t miss seeing their
particular heroines,” the museum offers tracks focused
on the achievements of Latinas and Black, American
Indian, Asian-American, Jewish-American and even
Texan women, “for our local visitors,” adds Brice.
The Women’s Museum hosts company meetings and supplements corporate diversity-training
programs. In addition, it provides networking and
leadership-development learning sessions to women
employees of AT&T, Capital One (No. 31 in the 2010
DiversityInc Top 50) and 37 other member-partner
organizations. In the 184-seat auditorium, it also offers
environmental-leadership and STEM programming
for underserved visiting middle-school girls and sum-
mer-camp groups. “We often have women engineers
come in and talk to them,” says Brice, adding that the
organization is in the process of developing distance-
learning programming to expand its reach. “Building
self-confidence in these girls and encouraging them
to dream big and stay in school is the foundation of all
our programming.”
What feedback does Brice receive from men who
visit? “Every little boy who comes through here says,
‘No, a woman did not invent Monopoly!’” she says.
The National Women’s History Museum helped move the Women Suffrage Statue to the Rotunda
National Women’s
History Museum
www.nwhm.org
Although still a cyber-museum, legislation to build a perma- nent facility for the National Women’s History Museum (NWHM) on the National Mall is moving forward. The House passed its version of The National Women’s History Museum Act (H.R. 1700) last October. Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, D-N. Y., who introduced the bill, said, “There are
museums for stamps and spies, for news and for poetry, but today’s action
by the House means women are on our way toward a ‘museum of our own.’
What women have contributed to the building of our country is a story long
overdue for the telling.” The Senate version (S. 2129) was pending vote in the
Public Works committee at press time. If either passes, “at the outside, it will
be eight years to complete,” says President and CEO Joan Bradley Wages.
The reason a permanent women’s museum on the National Mall is so
important is because too few historic sites commemorate women’s lives.
According to NWHM, among the 210 statues in the United States Capitol,
only nine are of women leaders and less than 5 percent of the 2,400 national
historic landmarks chronicle
women’s achievements.
