Yes We Can!

National Women’s History Month began in March 8, 1857, when the women of a New York City factory stood up and protested over poor working conditions.  Congress in 1981 established National Women’s History Week to be commemorated the second week of March.  Then in 1987, Congress expanded the week to a month.

When we think about women’s rights, we first think of the right to vote.  There is so much more to it than that.  It was interesting to find out that 1870 was the first U.S. census that actually counted women in the work force.  In 1870 women made up 15% of the entire workforce.   Today, women make up 59% of the entire workforce. The 1870 United States census counted 13,976,079 women. As of October of 2009 there are 155.8 million women in the United States.