Women's History Month - Resources and Activities

Suggested Activities

• Hold an event to honour the contributions of individual women in your community.
  Draw parallels with the achievements of women in earlier times to emphasize how women have built upon the work of their foremothers.
• Organize a fundraiser with the proceeds going to a women’s group or shelter.
• Use your imagination!
  Get a group together and perform a skit, recreating an event in women’s history, such as the Persons Case, or just "a day in the life of a women" in the last century.
• Ask your foremothers about their stories.
  Talk to your mother, aunts, or grandmother about their lives as women. Capture the stories on audio or videotape, or write them down before they are lost forever. Share these stories with your children, your local newspaper or radio station, historical society, or archives.
• Launch a creative writing or poster competition in your community, school or library on the theme of Women’s History.
  Ask participants to illustrate the roles that women have played over the years.
• Your local public library or archives is an important resource for community history.
  Urge them to create a display on the contributions of women to history, or hold a series of readings on books by or about women.
• Ask your local municipality or school board to declare the month or October as "Women’s History Month".
  Simply call the office of the mayor or a trustee of the school board and explain you are interested in having a proclamation issued. Follow up with a letter, using "Why Celebrate Women’s History Month?" as rationale and sample wording for the proclamation.
• Spread the word in newsletters and articles, as well as in your personal letters.
  Send your local newspapers a quiz on women’s history or write an article for your neighborhood newspaper, etc., using the background materials in this package.
• Organize a lunchtime or evening discussion on how women shaped Canada.
  You could invite a "living woman of history" in your community to speak about her life, or ask your local historical society or archives for speakers.
• Highlight an important historical event related to the advancement of women, for example the Persons Case of 1929 or the Royal Commission on the Status of Women (1970).
• Organize a walking tour of historic sites related to women’s achievements in your community, for example, pioneer homes, schoolhouses, business, farms, hospitals, museums, gravesites, etc.
• Visit a senior citizen’s residence or nursing home to talk to older women about their lives and experiences. This is valuable oral history. You may want to ask permission to tape record these stories or to submit the resulting histories to community newspapers.
• Show a film or video on women and their roles in history.
• Invite a speaker and follow up with a discussion or question and answer period on how women’s lives have changed, and why their contributions have received less recognition.
• Host a "Women’s History Month" potluck dinner, using family recipes from the past.
  Invite guests to talk about women in their history and inspiring women in their lives, sharing photos, diaries, letters, scrapbooks, or other memorabilia. Try answering the quiz!
• Contact local women’s studies programs, the history department at a nearby university or community college, or your local historical, or genealogical society for information and speakers. However, don’t feel limited to having only academics speak.
• Suggest that children’s story hours in your local school or public library during the month of October focus on biographies of women, or stories with strong women as central characters.
• Organize a workshop on how to teach women’s history: demonstrating how and where the Ontario curriculum lends itself to the teaching of women’s history, and sharing the wealth of resources available. Source: Status of Women Canada

Reading List

Bradford, Karleen. With Nothing but our Courage: the Loyalist diary of Mary MacDonald. Scholastic Canada, 2002.

Brandis, Marianne. The Tinderbox. Porcupine’s Quill, 1982.

Brandis, Marianne. The Sign of the Scales. Porcupine’s Quill, 1990.

Brummel Crook, Connie. Nellie L. Stoddart, 1994.

Ellis, Sarah. A Prairie as Wide as the Sea: the immigrant diary of Ivy Weatherall. Scholastic Canada, 2001.

Little, Jean. Orphan at my Door: the home child diary of Victoria Cope. Scholastic Canada, 2001.

Lunn, Janet. The Hollow Tree. Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 1997.

Matas, Carol. Footsteps in the Snow: the Red River diary of Isobel Scott. Scholastic Canada, 2002.

McGovern, Ann. Wanted Dead or Alive: The True Story of Harriet Tubman. Scholastic, 1965.

O’Dell, Scott. Sarah Bishop. Houghton Mifflin, 1980.

Sullivan, George. Harriet Tubman. Scholastic, 2001.

What books do you use? Let us Know.

Resources On Women's History

Status of Women Canada.
www.swc-cfc.gc.ca

Status of Women Canada is a federal government agency promoting gender equality and the full participation of women in the economic, social, cultural, and political life of the country. SWC provides resources and an organizer’s handbook for Women’s History Month.

Green Dragon Press.
www3.sympatico.ca/equity.greendragonpress/index.html

Green Dragon Press publishes books, videos, curriculum materials, and posters on women's history and equity issues. Materials designed for teachers, librarians, and everyone who wants to know more about women's stories and harassment prevention.

PAR-L Network.
www.unb.ca/PAR-L/milestones.htm

PAR-L (Policy, Action, Research List) is a bilingual, electronic network of individuals and organizations interested in women-centred policy issues in Canada. They have compiled a list of milestones in Canadian Women’s History.

National Film Board.
www.nfb.ca
A link to the National Film Board of Canada's - Women: A Historical Perspective.

Films or videos may be rented or purchased from the NFB; there is an extensive catalogue of films/videos on women’s history.