AFT Helps Teach Valuable Lessons in Women’s History Month

by James Parks, Mar 14, 2009

Mother Jones
Linda Chavez-Thompson

To commemorate March as Women’s History Month, AFT has compiled resources to use in classrooms, union meetings and other venues to discuss the role of women in our nation’s history. The site pulls together a variety of resources that provide a glimpse into the many significant contributions women have made in the fight for both legal and social equality.

Women have taken leadership roles from the onset of the union movement. Today, 44 percent of union members are women. They hold some of the highest posts in the movement, including AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker, 11 members of the AFL-CIO Executive Council and the presidents of several unions such as AFT, AFTRA, California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee,  Flight Attendants-CWA, School Administrators and  United American Nurses.

The resources compiled by AFT include profiles of some of the women who have fought for workers’ rights, fair wages, dignified working conditions and the freedom to join unions. They range from Lavinia Wright and Louise Mitchell, who formed the first all-women’s labor union in 1825, to the legendary Mother Jones and on to Linda Chavez-Thompson, the first woman to hold the office of AFL-CIO executive vice president and the first person of color to hold one of the top elected offices at the federation.

Click here to see a list and links to all the resources ands here for the profiles of labor heroines.

There is a section on the AFT site that chronicles key events and women “firsts.” Another section highlights women leaders and innovators, and another discusses the women’s suffrage movement.

An especially interesting section provides links to classroom projects that help students appreciate the role of women. One project, Women: Struggle and Triumph, asks middle school students to review a variety of journals, letters, narratives and other primary sources and then write their impressions of women in the 19th century.

A Woman’s Worth lets middle school and high schools students focus on the roles of women’ today. Students are asked to identify a variety of roles, break into small groups, choose a specific role and then make a “pitch” to the rest of the class about why their story should be made into a documentary film.

Another project, Glass Slippers Just Won’t Do, invites high school students to analyze various roles of women from 1800 to the present.

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