National Parks Honor Women’s History

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Across the 429 parks, monuments and historic sites managed by the National Park Service, only 76 are named after women, or otherwise center women’s history. This is a problem, because women have—and this should be obvious—played vital roles not only in the preservation and study of nature, and our nation’s history, but also because women are essential to the operation of the parks themselves. Last week, President Biden signed an executive order that will again to address that disparity.

The Executive Order on Recognizing and Honoring Women’s History will increase representation at sites managed by the National Park Service, and honor the history of women in America.

“By highlighting the role that women and girls have played in shaping the American story, we will tell a more complete account of American history and help create a more equal future,” states the White House.

The executive order directs the Department of the Interior (of which NPS is a bureau) to begin by conducting a study aimed at assessing which existing sites are significant to women’s history, identifying new sites, and developing recommendations about how women’s history could better be included across the park system.

An additional study will be the first ever comprehensive review of women’s history ever conducted by NPS. Its aim will be to identify women who have played significant roles in American history, especially during the American revolution, abolition and suffrage movements, the world wars, and civil rights and women’s rights movements. The study will seek to include women from diverse backgrounds, reflecting the full breadth of, “race, ethnicity, religion, age, geography, income, socioeconomic status, and other factors” in the American experience. Those results will then be used to determine which women may be recognized in new or existing historic sites.

The Executive Order also directs DOI to ask the NPS advisory board to develop recommendations from historians and other experts on opportunities to improve representation of women across NPS sites, materials and programs.

The action adds to the administration’s ongoing efforts to advance equality and representation across the country. Those efforts include the designation last year of both the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument in Mississippi and Illinois, and the Baaj Nwaavjo I’Tah Kukveni National Monument near the Grand Canyon, as well as naming Camp Amache—a site where Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II—a National Historic Site. The administration has, to-date, invested $19 million in parks commemorating women.

“President Biden’s Executive Order directs our team to think beyond the stories we currently tell to seek out the new and often untold stories of the women who have blazed a path for all of us,” said Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland. “Doing this work means telling our country’s full and honest story, learning about the women across generations who have strengthened our nation and building a future where everyone can thrive.”