Women’s History Week quickly gained traction across the United States, beginning in 1978 as a weeklong celebration in Santa Rosa, California. Nine years later, after petitions from the National Women’s History Project, Congress passed a joint resolution that officially deemed March Women’s History Month. Now, 38 years later, in collaboration with the Tia Palermo Library, Archer’s Gender-Sexuality Alliance club is doing their part to celebrate and honor women’s history.
GSA met in the library Monday, March 3, to create posters dedicated to influential queer women. Librarian Denise Soto said this activity was part of a larger library programming in celebration of Women’s History Month. The library ambassadors and faculty wanted to highlight the female voices in different marginalized groups each week throughout March, Soto said. The first week housed a display dedicated to pro-immigration and the Latine experience of life in America; this week will discuss transgender rights and the queer identity; the final week will be dedicated to petitioning for abortion rights.
“It started with a conversation that I had with [Head of School Elizabeth] English. We were kind of lamenting on the state of the world and how very specific communities within our broader community are affected by the current administration and their erasure of certain individuals,” Soto said. “So we came up with an idea for special displays in honor of Women’s History Month.”
Students and teachers alike created posters during the lunchtime meeting. Some of the individuals featured on the posters included Sally Ride, Lady Gaga, Rachel Carson and Frida Kahlo. GSA executive board member KJ McPherson (‘26) said GSA hopes to educate the student body on the influence queer women have had across decades of history.
“We wanted to do a mixture of more well-known and less well-known people,” McPherson said, “to have people that our community would know about but also give them a chance to learn about new people, too.”
Sophomore Adella Travers said she enjoyed seeing and learning about who her fellow GSA members spotlighted, and said she appreciated the inclusion of 19th century poet Emma Lazarus, who some scholars believe was queer.
“I know that Emma Lazarus is being featured. She was the poet who wrote the inscription that is featured at the bottom of the Statue of Liberty, and I think that she’s an interesting person to feature because the Statue of Liberty is associated with America a long time ago before being queer was something that was widely accepted,” Travers said. “It shows that even at that time, queer people were creating the most fundamental parts of America and really living the values of the country.”
Kayla Stone (‘28) created her poster on Dove Cameron. She said discovering that an actress whose work she grew up watching was queer just like herself was inspiring. Stone also said she hoped the posters created would allow other students to have similar positive experiences.
“I hope that people realize how special queer identities are, but also how it’s so unique because it’s not exactly a physical or visible trait, so people who you might not have known were queer show that queerness is just another part of their identity,” Stone said. “It doesn’t completely define who they are.”
In the United States, approximately 36.3% of women identify as women of color, 19.8% of women are disabled and 8.5% of women identify as LGBTQIA+. Travers said activities such as this one are incredibly important because they ensure that a diverse body of women are celebrated for their intersectional identities not only this March, but all year round.
“Intersectionality is a really important part of feminism, and sometimes when we talk about Women’s History Month, we just talk about white women or cisgender women or straight women, but really women as a group are so diverse. And you can’t have a Women’s History Month without recognizing that diversity,” Travers said. “I think these posters will be something that’s very interesting for people to learn about and something that will help them appreciate queer women’s contributions.”
Through uplifting the voices of transgender and queer women, Soto said she hopes the student body feels like their intersectional identities will always be valued and respected in the library.
“The library, and Archer in general, but the library especially is a safe space for everyone, no matter what you identify as, what your experiences are,” Soto said. “I hope that they know that they can be themselves down here and that their self-exploration will always be encouraged.”
