Every year, March celebrates Women’s History Month to honor women’s contributions to society, culture, and history. It recognizes the specific achievements women have accomplished. It encourages and empowers young girls around the nation not to limit themselves.
Role models influence people by setting a positive example and demonstrating integrity. Role models are often seen as crucial for inspiring ambition among young people. Particularly, female role models tend to create higher career aspirations for women, breaking down gender stereotypes in life and career choices.
Female role models empower the next generation, inspiring women and girls to think bigger by helping them see their potential and to go even beyond that. They prove that women can succeed in any field, especially male-dominated ones.
“As soon as we see a female that looks like me, or is similar to me in some way, our brains reprogram,” assistant technical theater director Molly Pops said. “Breaking those boundaries allows the next generations to break them as well and create new further boundaries.”
There are many benefits to having female role models. One of the biggest benefits is that they’re able to help promote gender equality and inclusivity. Female role models do not inspire just girls though. They can also inspire boys to discover their abilities and interests to strive for their own goals.
“People don’t realize that, historically, there were a lot of female composers who get overlooked because most people pay attention to the men in history,” orchestra teacher Abraham Rittenhouse said. “I really try to encourage people to go out and find female composers.”
It’s well known that some fields are male-dominated, such as STEM and construction, but many wouldn’t expect to hear that the music industry also tends to be male-dominated.
“Women throughout history have given us so many inventions, ideas and all sorts of things, for which the credit usually goes to men, especially in science and math,” Rittenhouse explained.
Women’s History Month provides an opportunity for people to acknowledge those who have created pathways for future leaders, and it also allows people to learn more about women in history who are often underrepresented.
An example of this is Rosalind Franklin, who never received primary credit for discovering the DNA double helix, even though the discovery would not have been possible if Franklin hadn’t collected that data. There are many more women who are overlooked and do not receive the same recognition as men do.
Despite all of the progress that has been made though, many women continue to face hardships today simply because they are women.
“I think that women are taken for granted a lot of the time, and are not recognized for many of the things that we contribute to society because of the patriarchy,” Senior Tyla Adair added.