even women have things we could improve. But just slightly.

Update: Thursday's column from Gail Collins looks at the recently released White House study on the status of American Women. Check this Saturday's Gender Report for full analysis of the results.

At a recent Teach for America conference, I had the drooling privilege of hearing Gloria Steinem speak about the ingredients needed for effective social change. A friend asked "what's the big deal about her?" My first response was shock, that this well-educated woman didn't know to fall at this icon's feet in idolatry. But then I found myself searching for a concrete explanation of just what exactly Steinem did for the women's movement. I came up blank. And ashamed.

I also did not previously know that March is Women's History Month. (In one of my prouder moments, it was a male student who informed me that the end of Black History Month meant the start of the month for "chicks and shit".) I honestly don't know how this could have happened. I proudly attended public school for 2nd-12th grade, in a school who's leadership class made sure to highlight the chosen minority or cause of the month with yellow butcher paper at every corner. I can't tell you how many times Langston Hughes poetry suddenly greeted me in the hallway, or on the turning of a calendar I was supposed to start caring about breast cancer or eating disorders.

I honestly feel like, despite my zeal for women's health and political issues, I have a fairly weak grasp of the full scope of women's history as it plays out in the United States. We get a dose of Susan B. Anthony, Sacajawea and Pocahontas are the sexy exotic heroines, toss around a few Seneca Falls references, shatter the glass ceiling with our 76 cents to the dollar, and call it a day. With all the pushes for more diversity in education, women seem to still be the missing voice. I can't remember the discussion of a single female scientist (Madame Curie didn't come until college), mathematician, explorer, wartime hero, or politician. That's not to say they weren't in the curriculum, but most were probably delegated to the glossy info boxes on the side of the page that said "these people don't warrant attention in the normal narrative of history but we have to cover our bases." Maybe if we just put enough women on fancy coins people will catch on...

So I'm taking history into my own hands. The National Women's History Project has a fantastic Resource Center with dense but pithy pages about the women's right movement, biographies of note, highlights of women of color, and national events surrounding women's history.

I'm also reading Gail Collins' America's Women, a look at 400 years of women's history in the United States. So hopefully the next time someone asks me who Gloria Steinem is, I can not only tell them in detail, but explain her place in the bigger story.

Here are some other resources and literature that have anchored my passion for feminism, for those of you looking to stoke your fires:

Nonfiction:
The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan
Half the Sky, by Nikolas Kristof

Literature:
The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood
Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
the poetry of Adrienne Rich
Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf
I Am Charlotte Simmons, by Tom Wolfe

Also, an especially poignant op-ed in today's NYT showed the danger of not focusing on the complete narratives of gender issues and rather isolating issues into gender-exclusive territory.