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Statuary Hall to include more women

Since it was founded in 1864, Statuary Hall in the Capitol Building has offered each state a chance to highlight two of their state's most important people. Due to legislation passed in 2000, states now have the opportunity to replace their statues. To date, only Kansas and Alabama are opting to change who they honor. Kansas is replacing both of its statues; one of the new selections will replace John James Ingalls with Kansas native Amelia Earhart. Alabama will replace the statue of Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry with one of Helen Keller.

Three states - New Mexico, Nevada, and North Dakota - currently only have one statue in the Hall. Two of these states have opted to choose a Native American woman as their second statue. Nevada's new statue will be of Sarah Winnemucca, who founded the first school for Native Americans in that state. North Dakota will honor Sacagawea, the guide and interpreter to the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

Six women are currently represented:

Mother Joseph - a nun and carpenter from the state of Washington
Esther Hobart Morris - worked to have her state, Wyoming, the first to grant women equal rights and became the first female Justice of the Peace
Jeannette Rankin - first woman elected to the House of Representatives representing the state of Montana
Dr. Florence Rena Sabin - noted scientist and pioneer in public health from Colorado
Maria Sanford - pioneer educator and civic leader from Minnesota
Frances Willard - a feminist and WCTU leader from Illinois.

Francis Willard was the first woman honored in Statuary Hall. She represents Illinois.

Celebrate Women's History- All Year Long!

A resolution to celebrate Women's History Month was approved with bipartisan support in both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate in 1987.

It is hard to believe that in March 1908, the Mayor of Cincinnati told the City Council that no woman was physically fit to operate an automobile. He probably couldn't imagine that the first popularly elected mayor of Cincinnati would be a female or that March would be celebrated as Women's History Month.

March was chosen because International Women's Day is March 8. In addition, Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton, Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the National Women's Council of the U.S. in March 1888. The National Women's Hall of Fame (1969), the Women's Campaign Fund and the National Women's Studies Association (both 1977) were also founded in March.

While March is a good time to consider our past and to be aware of our history, it is not the only time. Events involving women's history can be found in every month of the year. For example:

January (1975) Ella Grasso becomes the first woman governor (Connecticut) not succeeding her husband.
February (1994) Margaret Carlson becomes Time magazine's first woman columnist.
April (1977) Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues is established.
May (1907) Birth of Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring.
June (1974) Little League permits girls to play.
July (1974) US Passport Office begins accepting married women's maiden names.
August (1920) Nineteenth Amendment ratified.
September (1910) Alice Stebbins Wells becomes first female police officer in the US.
October (1976) Barbara Walters becomes the first women to co-anchor the evening news.
November (2000) Women control double-digit percentages of governorships and US Senate seats.
December (1935) Mary McLeod Bethune creates the National Council of Negro Women.

Don't envy American Women in 19th Century

In a beautiful spring day right after Easter, May and Archer got married and went on their honeymoon trip in "The Age of Innocence," which depicts the elegant elite world of mid-19th-century Manhattan. However, for most American women at that time, the pleasure and romance of spring was diminished by the hard work to be done after a harsh winter.

Women were responsible for domestic environments and producing the food, goods and services necessary for family survival. Spring was particularly a time for house cleaning, since soot and ashes from heating and lighting covered every surface in the house for long winter nights. Bleaching linen was one of the big spring tasks, too.

Over the next two hundreds years, women not only witnessed but also led the improvement of technology to save labor in the home. More than 140 cooking devices were patented by women in the nineteenth century alone. Food processing devices that women have patented range from apple peelers and ice cream freezers to mechanical mixers. Amanda Theodosia Jones developed the vacuum canning process for food preservation in 1873. Josephine Cochran invented the powered dishwasher in 1889. The rotary washer patented by Margaret Plunkett Colvin in 1871 was one of the most successful early clothes washing machines.

* Travel to old New York City through "The Age of Innocence" by Edith Wharton, the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize twice. * Learn about women's contributions in Technology in "Mothers and Daughters of Invention: Notes for a Revised History of Technology" by Autumn Stanley.