Women’s History Month expands with time

During the seminars I give frequently on business communication, I often talk about the need to gear writing to attract and keep the interest of today’s busy workers.

Make your documents short, sweet and easy, I say, or many of your intended readers will stop reading after a few convoluted paragraphs.

To provide practice in producing clear, concise documents, I hand out brief, 35-page booklets chosen because workshop attendees can finish them in about 15 minutes.

All are about famous inventors, scientists and artists whose work had massive impact on the world’s economy. I instruct workshop participants to reduce the information to a single page.

The subjects of the biographies include telephone’s Alexander Graham Bell, railroad’s Andrew Carnegie, electricity’s Thomas Edison, psychology’s Sigmund Freud, automobile’s Henry Ford, aerospace’s John Glenn, literature’s Ernest Hemingway, technology’s Steven Jobs, fast food’s Ray Kroc, film’s John Ford, music’s George Harrison, radio’s Guglielmo Marconi, banking’s J.P. Morgan, art’s Norman Rockwell, retail’s Sam Walton and flight’s Orville and Wilbur Wright. Notice anything? Yes, indeed, the list contains not a single women. Zero. Nada. Zippo.

To this day, the economic accomplishments of females past remain greatly underrepresented in all forms of media.

The reason is not that your mothers, grandmothers, greatgrandmothers and earlier forbears did little but nap on muslin sheets and drink hot toddies when finished their admirable work caring for home and families.

Shockingly, few women born before the second half of the 20th century show up in documents about business success because no one had the foresight to preserve their stories. Why bother? Organizers of this year’s Women’s History Month have been striving since 1988 to change the dismal value assigned to women’s work.

Their 2017 theme of the sponsoring group, based in Santa Rosa, Calif., is “honoring trailblazing women in business.”

Its honorees this year include Kate Mullany, a laundry worker who founded the first-all female labor union in 1864 in Troy, N.Y.; Lucy Gonzalez Parsons, a former slave who organized the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905 in Chicago; and Maggie Lena Walker, a banking pioneer who chartered a financial institution in 1905 in Charlotte, N.C.

Heard of them before? Me, neither. Embarrassing, huh?

Like entities throughout the nation, numerous organizations in this area have endorsed Women’s History Month, which ends Friday. Local supporters include Chester County Commissioners; Chester Fund for Women and Girls; Chester County Democratic Women’s Leadership Initiative; Chester County Historical Society; and the Chester County Library System.

For the past week or so, I have received dozens of emails about Women’s History Month. Most, like Draper’s and Coldwater Creek e-tailers, were trying to sell me something.

But hey, any publicity is good publicity, right?

Of course, top-down efforts rarely create long-range change

in public perception. Altered societal consciousness usually occurs bottom up, from grassroots efforts by you and me.

So what can everyday people do to cause the past victories of women be reflected in history books, business texts and popular media?

• Conduct research. Start close to home. I bet your ancestry contains women whose work contributed mightily to the family and community’s welfare. Interview older relatives. Look closely at old photographs. Research family geneaology. Travel to former neighborhoods. Track down old news reports. You may discover that your Aunt Sarah was the brains behind a successful family corner grocery or shoe repair shop, though Uncle Fred got all the credit. Sorry, Fred.

• Pay attention. About 10 years ago, my Aunt Roseabelle casually told me that my maternal grandmother, whom I never met, had acted as midwife for most babies born during the 1940s in County Donegal, Ireland. Well, doesn’t that mean my uneducated Granny Harvey knew a thing or so about obstetrics and gynecology? But no one ever recorded her part in bringing hundreds of children into the world, many of whom began successful in numerous realms. What bigger economic contribution is that?

• Record the story. At the very least, make written notes of successful female forbears for future generations. If you discover some eye popping truth such as your great grandmother’s pivotal role in the development of an important vaccine, notify professional organizations and trade journals about your findings. Consider writing a book. Take pride in giving long overdue credit for the woman responsible for some of your DNA.

• Support new discoveries. During the buildup to this year’s Academy Awards, I was delighted about multiple nominations for a film called Hidden Figures. It was adapted from a book about three female black mathematicians instrumental in the space missions of the 1960’s. Who knew? My suggestion: see the movie before the month is out. The more people spend money on women’s stories recently brought to light, the more publishers and producers will be looking for manuscripts and screenplays in the same genre.

• Enlighten young people. Although biographies dedicated to a single woman success story from the past remain difficult to find, books covering groups are becoming more common. Among them: Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World by Rachel Ignotofsky; Girls Think of Everything: Stories of Ingenious Inventions by Women by Catherine Thimmesh and Melissa Sweet; and In the Company of Women: Inspiration and Advice from 100 Makers, Artists and Entrepreneurs by Grace Bonney. Need a gift for a female teen-ager? Forgo the lip gloss and nail polish for one of the books.

• Avoid snarkiness. OK, maybe I am talking about my own tendency to roll my eyeballs at historical advances I view as late in the game. Take Alexander and Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton. As you may know, he was the inspiration last year for one of the most popular plays ever on the Broadway stage. But not her, which immediately puts me on the defensive. The good news is that experts are finally taking notice of the short shrift suffered by the mother of Hamilton’s eight children. In an article entitled Why Elizabeth Hamilton Is Deserving of Her Own Musical at www. smithsonian.org, writer Kat Long notes that during her 50-year widowhood, Schuyler Hamilton had many independent achievements. Among them was founding an orphanage in New York still operating today.

• Rethink terms. Consider my experience reexamining my mother’s economic impact on the world. When she came to the United States from a rural village in Ireland shortly before the Depression, she had no marketable skills such as shorthand or typing. But my mom was gifted at the craft of embroidery. Instead of using her talent by stitching pillow cases and guest towels for home use, she figured that she could make money putting initials on shirts for wealthy professionals on the Main Line. And she did, with great success. Yet she never called herself anything other than a monogrammer. I realized only decades after her death that my mom had been in the vanguard of an economic trend that has manifested itself in huge numbers only in the past 20 years. And so, in spoken and written communication, I gave my mom a posthumous title she had so richly deserved in life: woman entrepreneur.