Women's History Month

Overview

March is Women’s History Month, a time to honor the achievements and contributions made by women throughout US history. Throughout March, we recognize those who paved the way in the struggle for gender equity and those who continue to break barriers today.

In 2026, the theme for Women's History Month is “Leading the Change: Women Shaping a Sustainable Future," which highlights women who “are reimagining and rebuilding systems to ensure long-term sustainability – environmental, economic, educational, and societal.” The theme of International Women’s Day, which takes place on March 8 each year, is “Give to Gain,” which “encourages a mindset of generosity and collaboration.”

New York City and State are both steeped in women’s history. Throughout the nineteenth century, many groundbreaking women called New York home, including Elizabeth Blackwell, who opened the New York Infirmary for Women and Children in Manhattan as the nation’s first female doctor, and Emily Roebling, who played a crucial role in completing construction of the Brooklyn Bridge after her husband fell ill. Around the same time, the state also became the center of the fight for women's right to vote: in 1848, suffragists gathered at the Seneca Falls Convention to demand equality under the law.

After the 19th Amendment was passed, women continued shaping New York City’s culture and politics. Labor organizers like Clara Lemlich tirelessly advocated for the rights of working women. During the Harlem Renaissance, artists such as sculptor Augusta Savage, Broadway performer Florence Mills, and writer Zora Neale Hurston rose to prominence.

By the mid-twentieth century, journalist and activist Gloria Steinem, NYC Congresswomen Bella Abzug and Shirley Chisholm, and other local organizers helped lead the second wave feminist movement, which renewed the push for women’s equality. This era also saw the first nationwide recognition of Women’s History Month in 1987. This built on the 1978 celebration of the first Women’s History Week, which had been organized by an advocacy group in California who originally chose dates in March to align with the celebration of International Women’s Day.

In 1980, President Jimmy Carter issued the first presidential proclamation recognizing Women’s History Week nationwide. In it, he wrote that since our country’s earliest days,

“Men and women have worked together to build this nation. Too often the women were unsung, and sometimes their contributions went unnoticed. But the achievements, leadership, courage, strength, and love of the women who built America was as vital as that of the men whose names we know so well.”

Carter also quoted historian Gerda Lerner in his proclamation: “Women’s history is women’s right—an essential, indispensable heritage from which we can draw pride, comfort, courage, and long-range vision.”

By continuing to recognize Women's History Month year after year, we honor Lerner's message: that understanding the context and significance of women’s stories and accomplishments, as well as the long history of women’s activism and the fight for universal rights, is essential to the education of all Americans.

We encourage you to attend the events and exhibitions and explore the resources on this page to engage with Women's History this month and all year round.

Events, Exhibitions, and Places to Visit

There is plenty to do throughout March to celebrate women’s history across all five boroughs. Whether it’s family activities at your favorite museum, educational programs for our teachers, or touring the fascinating historical sites that are right in our backyard, we hope you will take advantage of the events, exhibitions, and places to visit all month long.

Events

• No matter how you want to commemorate Women’s History Month, the New York Public Library has something for you: fun arts and science crafts, movie nights, story times, and more will keep your family busy all month long.
• In addition to Women's History Month, March also marks the start of the spring season! If you're looking to get outside to celebrate, check out the NYC Parks Women's History Month events happening across the city.
• The Intrepid Museum will be hosting their 12th Annual Girls in Science and Engineering Day on Saturday, March 14, 2026, from 11AM–3PM. Free for NYC students and families, this event will feature hands-on experiences, exciting demonstrations, captivating discussions, and more.

Exhibitions

• Check out the digital exhibition “Tenement Women: Agents of Change,” available online from the Tenement Museum. The exhibit honors Women’s History, with particular attention paid to the movements for social, cultural, and political change that emerged on the Lower East Side in Manhattan.
• Visit the current installations at the Center for Women’s History at The New York Historical, including:
• “Women Making Theatre in New York City,” which explores the creativity and flexibility of the women who succeeded in show business during the 19th and 20th centuries, both on stage and behind the scenes. This installation is on view until October 30, 2026.
• “Raising Equality: How the Moffitts’ Upbringing Changed Women’s Sports,” which explores the relationship that tennis champ and women’s rights advocate Billie Jean King had with her siblings growing up, and “how their egalitarian upbringing shaped women’s sports.” This installation is on view until September 25, 2026.
• The ongoing “Women’s Voices” installation, which tells the story of activists, scientists, performers, athletic champions, social change advocates, writers, and educators through video, audio, music, text, and images.
• The Library of Congress has a huge range of Women’s History Month Exhibits dealing with a number of different topics and time periods.
• The First But Not Last—Women Who Ran for President virtual exhibit highlights the women in our nation’s history who took on the challenge of advancing society’s progress towards an inclusive vision of the American presidency. Though these women were the first to announce, the first to campaign, the first to raise money, or the first to win a primary, they will not be the last.
• Explore online exhibits from the National Women’s History Museum, ranging from the stories of women who broke barriers in the United States, from Olympians to NASA engineers.
• “Music HerStory: Women and Music of Social Change” is a current exhibition form the National Museum of American History, focusing on women’s leadership in music and social change as it relates to the American story, with related resources available online.
• Learn more about groundbreaking women writers and poets—including Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Gwendolyn Brooks, Emily Dickinson, and Beatrix Potter with resources from the Morgan Library and Museum.

Places to Visit

• Women’s history is all around us: explore public art and monuments across all five boroughs dedicated to women and made by women or learn about the history of local parks that are named for women.
  • Can’t get enough of NYC parks? Take a stroll on the Women’s History Walkthrough Central Park.
• As one of the stops along the Women’s Heritage Trailthat crosses the entire state, the Alice Austen House Museumhonors the life and work of the Staten Island native, who would become one of the first female photographers to work outside the studio and paved the way for women artists of the 20^thcentury
• The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation has highlighted the remarkable number of people and places in the neighborhood that were notable in the fight for women’s right to vote on their Women’s Suffrage History Map.
• For sites in Manhattan honoring women who lived and worked there, check out the Manhattan Women’s History Map of Milestones,created by the Manhattan Borough President’s Office.
• The Monumental Women Virtual NYC Women’s Rights History Trailalso highlights historic places throughout the five boroughs where women’s history was made.

These books are readily available through the Citywide Digital Library on Sora, which provides free access to hundreds of digital e-books and audiobooks for our students. You can also check out Sora's Feminism is For Everyone Collection, which has many more suggestions for books to read this month, and all year-round.

In addition, all three public library systems in NYC have great reading recommendations for Women's History Month: check out Who Runs the World: Celebrating Women in March with Books for Kids & Teens from the New York Public Library and Moving Forward Together: Celebrating Women's History Month Book List from the Queen's Public Library. 

Video and Audio Resources

• Watch “American Masters: Unladylike,” a series which tells the stories of extraordinary American heroines from the early years of feminism. Unladylike2020 is a multimedia series consisting of a one-hour special (Unladylike2020: The Changemakers) and 26 digital short films featuring courageous, little-known and diverse female trailblazers from the turn of the 20th century. For more, check out PBS’s other recommendations for things to watch during Women’s History Month.
• Hear from history-making women themselves as they tell the stories of how they fought for justice and equality with the collection of “Revolutionary Women” TedTalks For more, check out TedEd’s Animations to Watch During Women’s History Month and Lessons About Awesome Women in History.
• The Women’s History Minute is an informational 1-minute video series developed by the Women’s History Museum providing bite-sized primers on important figures and movements of women’s history, such as Ida B. Wells, Grace Hopper, Dr. Chien-Shiung Wu, and more.
• From education reform to universal suffrage, abolition, and temperance, the United States in the 19th Century is often remembered as a period of reform. For an overview of the many movements that had major impacts on the lives of American women, and the activists who worked tirelessly to bring about change, check out the Crash Course US History episode on Women in the 19th Century.
• Learn about the women who make, appear in, collect, and took care of art in The Frick Museum’s collection commemorating the one-hundredth anniversary of suffrage in 2020 with their video series honoring their life and work called “What’s Her Story?”
• Listen to In Their Own Words oral histories featuring the stories of remarkable women like civil rights activist Mrs. Willie Pearl Mackey King and the real-life “Rosie the Riveters” of World War II.
• Learn about the complicated relationship between the suffragists and abolitionists, particularly at the end of the US Civil War in The Racial Divide in the Women's Suffrage Movement, a video from Facing History and Ourselves.

Educator Resources

• The National Educator’s Association has put together a comprehensive list of resources and lessons to use during Women’s History Month in the classroom.
• Explore the Smithsonian’s American Women’s History Museum learning resources. This collection of documents, discussion guides, videos, classroom activities, and more help students of all ages learn the stories of history-making women who helped shape the United States as we know it today.
• Women and the American Story (WAMS) is a free curriculum website from the New-York Historical which offers educational resources that “illuminate diverse women’s contributions to the American past.” For more, check out all of the resources from the New-York Historical Center for Women’s History.
• The Zinn Education Project provides several Women’s History resources, including teaching guides, films, book recommendations, and more, free on their website.
• From the National Women’s History Alliance, explore their “Education Connection” resource guide, which contains documentaries, curriculum materials, and more, with a particular focus on suffrage and the fight for equal rights.
• From lessons on Shirley Chisholm and other women who have run for office in the United States, the history of the Equal Rights Amendment, or an examination of intersectionality in women’s activism, the Beyond Suffrage lesson plans from the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) will provide students with a look at women’s history outside of Seneca Falls. For more from MCNY, check out their resource guide on Women’s Labor Activism in New York City in connection to their “Activist New York” exhibition.
• Facing History and Ourselves has a large number of Women’s History Month resources available online, like their Equal Rights Amendment mini-lesson, which explores the long and ongoing fight to enshrine women’s right to equal protection in the US Constitution.
• The Gilder Lehrman Institute for American History has a wide range of digital resources available through their “History Now” collection—their lessons deal with topics from 1620 to the present.
• Learning for Justice has a number of relevant lesson plans to use for Women’s History Month, including “Female Identity and Gender Expectations,” which tackles the barriers that limit girls’ and women’s opportunities and asks students to explore how those barriers can be dismantled, and “Beyond Rosa Parks: Powerful Voices for Civil Rights and Social Justice,” which explore the stories of female civil rights activists whose names you might not know.
• Learning for Justice also has resources to Honor Trans Women During Women’s History Month, that will help educators and students to embrace inclusivity in the classroom this March.
• In 2022, the United States celebrated 50 years of Title IX, the revolutionary law that protects people from discrimination based on sex in educational programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance. High school students can learn more about what Title IX does, the history of the bill, and the ways that it continues to have an impact today with a lesson plan from C-SPAN Classroom.
• Learn about women and the environment, the legacy of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and more—all from the National Park Service’s Women’s History webpage.
• Browse the Women’s History Virtual “Bookshelf” from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which includes documentaries, exhibits, articles, and, of course, a list of books to enjoy and learn from throughout the month.
• From sports stars to musicians, environmentalists to educators—learn more about history-making women with the National Women’s History Museum’s biographies and articles.

Hidden Voices began as a collaboration with the Museum of the City of New York that was initiated to help City students learn about the countless individuals who are often "hidden" from traditional historical records. Each of the people highlighted in the series has made a positive impact on their communities while serving as outstanding examples of leadership, advocacy, and community service.

Hidden Voices curriculum resources are now available through WeTeach NYC, including:

• Hidden Voices: Untold Stories in New York City History, which features women like Brooklyn Bridge Engineer Emily Roebling and civil rights activist Elizabeth Jennings Graham.
• Hidden Voices: LGBTQ+ Stories in United States History, which features notable individuals like activist Pauli Murray and poet Audre Lorde.
• Hidden Voices: Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in United States History, which features the stories of women ranging from Queen Lil’uokalani—the last queen of Hawai’i—to Dr. Anandibai Joshee—who was among the first women to study medicine in the United States, and the first woman from India to have done so—among many other trailblazing women.
• Hidden Voices, Stories of the Global African Diaspora Volume 1, which features stories across many eras of history—from Hatshepsut, one of only six women to rule in ancient Egypt, to Mary Seacole, a nurse from Kingston, Jamaica who is known for caring for injured troops during the Crimean War.

In addition to these lessons, we regularly feature profiles on history-making women who could be considered “hidden voices.” During Women’s History Month, check out our profiles on:

• Eunice Foote, a groundbreaking amateur scientist who is widely considered to be the first person to discover the greenhouse gas effect after many years of her work being overlooked.
• Amelia “Oppy” Jones, a cartoonist best known for her Subway Sun poster series. Her work appeared throughout New York City’s public transportation systems for twenty years. 
• Eugenie Clark, a fish scientist from New York City who earned herself the nickname, “Shark Lady,” thanks to her trailblazing research on fish and shark species around the world as well as her personal dedication to protecting sharks and their ocean habitats from extinction.
• Bernice Sandler, a champion of the groundbreaking Title IX law that transformed student athletics and gender equity in the United States.
• Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, who came to the United States from China in the early 20th Century and went on to play an instrumental role in the growth of New York’s Chinatown and the universal suffrage movement that advanced voting rights for women.
• Emily Roebling, the devoted wife who became the acting engineer of the largest transportation project ever conceived and constructed up until that point in time: the Brooklyn Bridge.
• Maritcha Lyons, a lifelong educator and activist in New York City who became one of the City's first Black assistant principals. Over the course of her career, Lyons was at the center of many of the most important civil rights fights of the nineteenth century.

You can find more of our profiles throughout the year on our Hidden Voices webpage.