Women’s History Month 2021
In 1982, President Reagan declared March 7 as the beginning of Women’s History Week. Five years later, the National Women’s Project petitioned Congress to designate March as Women’s History Month. Since 1995, Presidents Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump have issued a series of annual proclamations designating the month of March as “Women’s History Month.” These proclamations celebrate and recognize the contributions and specific achievements women have made over the course of American history in a variety of fields (Library of Congress).
This past March, our program celebrated Women's History Month with three speakers presented discussions that explored different aspects of women’s lives:
Dr. Alice Ma
Dr. Ma discussed the relationship between ethnic/racial discrimination and sexual discrimination on clinically significant depressive symptoms among Latino sexual minority men (i.e., gay and bisexual men and other men who have sex with men) and Latina transgender women in North Carolina.
Dr. Lina-Maria Murillo
In the years before Roe v. Wade, thousands of women traveled across Mexico’s northern borderlands to obtain illegal abortions. Underground referral services like the Society for Humane Abortion (SHA), a feminist organization based in San Francisco, shuttled countless women to Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez from the late 1960s until the early 1970s. Some records indicate that a transborder abortion corridor between the United States and Mexico existed as early as the 1950s, encouraging the work of at least two generations of abortion providers in cities like Ciudad Juárez. Dr. Murillo discussed the history of abortion providers in the borderlands at a time when abortion was illegal in United States and Mexico.
Dr. Aria Halliday
Dr. Halliday examined the field of Black Girlhood Studies, its place within larger fields such as Women’s Studies, Black Studies and interdisciplinary studies, and the cultural work required to create safety for Black girls, their intellectual and creative contributions, and their futures.