This article originally appeared on the National Collaborative for Women's History Sites website.
This Toolkit has been created by the NCWHS Research and Interpretation Committee to assist sites as they expand and integrate their efforts to tell the stories of women and their historic experiences.
Representatives of over 20 historic sites gathered in Washington, D.C. in 2001 with historians, preservationists and interested citizens to create the National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites (NCWHS). The organization focuses on “the preservation and interpretation of sites and locales that bear witness to womens’ participation in American life.” With initial funding from the National Park Services, the founders claimed that women’s history existed everywhere, if only people looked for it. Founder Heather Huyck suggested that “There is no site that doesn’t have women’s history. If we are to understand who we are and where we’ve come from, we need to know the whole story.”
A great deal of work has been done in the last twenty years to integrate the history of women into sites, parks and museums. This Toolkit has been created by the NCWHS Research and Interpretation Committee to assist sites as they expand their efforts to tell the whole story. This is particularly important as we become more attuned to the many differences among women and their historic experiences. Those differences shaped their lives, separately and in relation to each other and to men. Read more...
