When I started working on women's history about 30 years ago, the field did not exist. People didn't think that women had a history worth knowing.
-- Gerda Lerner

Lerner, a historian, author, educator, wife, and mother, is one of the six women honored this year by the National Women's History Project as an exemplar of "the American Spirit." She was born in 1920 into a wealthy Jewish family in Vienna, Austria. With that little bit of information, you could perhaps finish some of her story yourself, but if it's true that God is in the details, a few more are needed.

As a young teenager, Gerda witnessed the rise of Nazi power in Europe. As part of the underground resistance, she was imprisoned, forced into exile with her family, and, at 18, she came to the United States. She eventually became a naturalized citizen, married her life partner, Carl Lerner, and had two children. Before returning to her education in 1958, Gerda was active in numerous grassroots community movements, advocating for civil rights, peace and social justice, and better public education.

Gerda worked against McCarthyism during that dark period of our history. In 1966, she received her Ph.D. from Columbia University and started her career as a history professor and author. She is considered the foremost pioneer in the scholarly field of women's history and in 1981 became the first woman in 50 years to be elected president of the Organization of American Historians. After four decades of teaching and writing, she has just completed her story, an autobiography titled Fireweed, due out in April.

Although Dr. Lerner is famous for her work in the field of history, it is her own history that is intriguing to me. I look forward to reading her account of the years before her life of valued (read: paid) work began. The Women's History Month theme this year is "Women Sustaining the American Spirit." The brochure about it and the six honorees states, "Our history has been enriched with women whose lives and work have transformed our nation and the ideas of their day. Women's history is also about countless women who have lived out their lives quietly at the center of their families."

The appeal of the New Right is simply that it seems to promise that nothing will change in the domestic realm. People are terrified of change there, because it's the last humanizing force left in society and they think, correctly, that it must be retained.

That was Lerner quoted in 1981. Can we all agree that things have changed, for better and for worse, in the domestic realm since then? Whether women have entered the world of paid work by choice, force, or need, we are there.

Being there has put us on the frontlines of our current war on terrorism. I spent a few hours searching the Internet
for a gender breakdown of the victims of September 11 before calling a reference librarian for assistance. Even she couldn't find that detail, but she did find a site (www.september11victims.com) that lists the names of all the known dead. Although I haven't yet made my way through all 3021 names, I do know that of the 41 passengers and crew listed for Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania, 20 were female. Of the 59 listed for Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon, 26 were female. Of the 87 on Flight 11, which crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center, 42 were female. Of the 60 on Flight 175, which crashed into the south tower, 18 were female. Are we getting close to being equal yet in the places that count?

Compare those ratios to these of female representation in our government. Of 100 senators of the United States, 13 are female. Of 435 members of the House of Representatives, 62 are female. I don't know about other women, but I am seriously considering fomenting a "No taxation without equal representation" rebellion.

The one voice in opposition to the War Powers Resolution granting the Bush administration unprecedented powers to wage war and stifle dissent -- the only voice that spoke for me -- was female. Talk about peer pressure and the courage to stand up to it -- Representative Barbara Lee should become the national poster child for courage and the American spirit. Instead, she has received numerous death threats.

The strength of our democracy lies in our Constitution, its Bill of Rights, and the long tradition of governmental checks and balances. Let us keep democracy alive by vigorous debate and discourse, by the careful weighing of various alternatives, rather than by a blind and automatic rallying around the president. The decisions made by politicians in the next few weeks and months may affect the lives and resources of the American people for years to come. Let us all be part of the decision-making, and let those who claim leadership show it by coming up with alternatives to war.
-- Gerda Lerner, October 2001

Each year 489 million people, 127 million cars, 211 thousand boats, and five million shipping containers enter the United States. The armed guards now at airports don't give me much comfort about easing the threat of terrorism. More likely, they'll be as effective as drug-sniffing dogs in stemming the tide of drug abuse in this country.

Where is the national discussion about the root causes of terrorism and how we are addressing them? Where is our principle of unity in diversity -- E Pluribus Unum? Where is our principle of freedom of speech, of the balance of individual liberty, and the protection of the common good? My personal sense of safety is diminishing with every bomb that is dropped and every right that is restricted.

And what about "the last humanizing force of society?" We have already witnessed what happens when women are not fully present in the traditional domestic realm of unpaid family and community work. When we migrated to the more valued realm of paid employment without an adequate societal shift to take up the slack, families and communities suffered. What can we expect when the needs of the domestic realm of the nation and the world -- adequate child care, health-care, elder care, and education, feeding the hungry, housing the homeless -- are undervalued even more to maintain military and economic dominance?

The National Priorities Project calculates that the national budget for 2002 proposes spending 49.2 percent of your tax dollars for defense and three-point-six percent for international affairs. Is this a distribution of funds that fairly reflects your priorities? Didn't communism collapse under the weight of an excessive arms buildup? Do we have to wait until the entire country is in shambles before we are invited in to clean up the mess?

Women rule. This is not an opinion -- it's a mandate. At this point in women's history we need to be as concerned with whether we will have a future worth living as we are in celebrating a history worth knowing. We can only do this by becoming active citizens in this diminishing democracy, as hard as it might be to add one more ball to the juggling act. We can only do it by reviving and sustaining the true American spirit.

We can start by communicating with our current elected officials and making sure they know our priorities. We can also work for, support, and elect women (and/or men) who understand and respect women's priorities and women's worth. We can also start at the very grassroots level in our homes and our communities.

Celebrate Women's History Month this month by taking a stand, speaking your truth to power, reclaiming and sustaining the American spirit of government of the people, by the people, and for the people. And pay attention to the details.

Autonomy means women defining themselves and the values by which they live, and beginning to think of institutional arrangements which will order their environment in line with their needs . . . Autonomy means moving out from a world in which one is born to marginality, a past without meaning and a future determined by others into a world in which one acts and chooses, aware of a meaningful past and free to shape one's future."
-- Gerda Lerner

Issue Date: March 22 - 28, 2002