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Taking the Kids: Celebrating women when you travel this spring

Eileen Ogintz, Tribune Content Agency on

Meanwhile, see the exhibit Picturing Women Inventors at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. That’s also where you will find the excellent Girlhood (It’s Complicated), which showcases how girls have changed history and have used their voices to make a difference (check out the online exhibit).

The online National Women’s History Museum (NWHM) is showcasing Heritage and Harmony: Her Art, Her Voice. Created by pianist Donna Weng Friedman it includes a concert pianist, violinist, opera and Broadway performers and more. The idea is to inspire and empower school-aged girls of color to find their true voice.

Ask your kids if they could imagine a time when women couldn’t vote. The Women’s Rights National Historical Park tells the story of the first Women’s Rights Convention held in Seneca Falls, N.Y., on July 19-20, 1848. It is a story of struggles for civil rights, human rights, and equality, global struggles that continue today. Geared to children/students ages 5 to 12 years old, this downloadable booklet consists of activities that teach about civil rights and human rights.

Could your teens imagine leaving the only home they knew to move to a strange city and work grueling hours at a mill? The Lowell National Historic Park in Massachusetts is a good place to explore the “mill girls” story and the industrial revolution. Though they did work in grueling conditions, for many it was the first time they were living on their own and earning their own money.

During World War II, a shortage of white male workers led the government to recruit women to war industry jobs. Integration of women and minorities into the workforce was initially met with resistance, however, the new opportunities for women and minorities "cracked open" the door to equal rights and would later impact the civil rights movement and women's movement. Find out more at the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California. Perhaps a woman in your family was a home-front war worker

I loved visiting Val-Kill, the Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site near President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s home and library in Hyde Park, N.Y. It is the only national historic site dedicated to a first lady, showcasing Mrs. Roosevelt’s efforts on behalf of social reform, economic justice and human rights. Did you know that she was a correspondent covering the United Nations for United Press International in the early 1960s? She was a civil rights and women’s rights advocate ahead of her time. “We will be the sufferers if we let great wrongs occur without exerting ourselves to correct them,” she famously said.

 

Appropriate today, don’t you think?

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(For more Taking the Kids, visit www.takingthekids.com and also follow TakingTheKids on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram where Eileen Ogintz welcomes your questions and comments. The Kid’s Guide to Philadelphia, the 13th in the kid’s guide series, was published in 2020, with The Kid’s Guide to Camping coming in 2021.)

©2022 Eileen Ogintz. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.


(c) 2022 DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

 

 

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