By CORKY HALL
Women’s History Month may arrive every March on the calendar, but Northwestern Oklahoma State University history professors say the stories it highlights have never really gone away; they have simply been overlooked.
According to Eric Schmaltz, professor of history, the academic focus on women’s history expanded significantly in the 1960s and 1970s as part of a broader movement toward social history, which aimed to bring everyday people into the historical record.
“Women make up about half the population,” Schmaltz said. “It makes sense that they should have a place at the table.”
While women were largely dismissed from formal political power for much of American history, faculty say their influence never stopped. Roger Hardaway, professor of history, noted that the lack of voting rights once limited how seriously women’s voices were taken.
“If you don’t have the right to vote, who cares what you think?” Hardaway said, referencing the long fight for suffrage that culminated in 1920.
Even so, women continued shaping the nation. Jana Pittman, instructor of history, pointed to Abigail Adams, who urged her husband to “remember the ladies” as the nation’s founding documents were drafted. Though women would wait more than a century for the right to vote, their advocacy did not pause.
From suffrage leaders to civil rights activist Clara Luper, women steadily pushed for reform. Schmaltz highlighted Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” shaped public opinion on slavery, and Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress in 1916.
Pittman added that women were central to westward expansion, public education and historic preservation, including saving Mount Vernon through a women-led organization.
“Women have always been there,” Pittman said. “They’ve been working alongside men to build this country, even if they weren’t always written about.”
That legacy is measurable today. Women now earn nearly 60 percent of bachelor’s degrees nationwide, and their representation in Congress has grown steadily over the past several decades.
Still, faculty say awareness remains essential. Studying women’s experiences in politics, reform movements and community life gives students a better understanding of the country’s foundation.
As Pittman put it, women were never absent from history; they were simply waiting to be written