Humanities Moments

In the Words of Women

In what would quickly become a rallying cry, historian Laura Thatcher Ulrich proclaimed in 1976 that “well-behaved women seldom make history.” 

This March, in honor of Women’s History Month, we’ve gathered Humanities Moments that document the legacies of women who’ve inspired us by breaking the rules, raising their voices, and changing the way we think about ourselves, about women, and about the role they’ve played in shaping our world. 

In 2014 Chimamanda Adichie declared that “we should all be feminist” and reminded us of the danger of a single story. This collection of Moments takes both Ulrich’s and Adichie’s words as a guide, with perspectives drawn from the lives of a broad assortment of “misbehaving” women: Abigail Adams, who exhorted her husband and the Founding Fathers to “remember the ladies;” Betty Friedan, whose book The Feminine Mystique challenged the assumption that a woman’s fulfillment stems from managing a household; and Zora Neale Hurston, who devoted her life to celebrating the lives and towns of African Americans of the rural south. 

In the Words of Women