PATRICK AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. – In observance of National Women’s History Month, celebrated each year during the month of March, the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute (DEOMI) proudly announces the availability of original artwork available for download from DEOMI’s public website at www.deomi.org.
National Women’s History Month is an opportunity to honor and celebrate historic achievements of women. By 1986, 14 states had already declared March as Women’s History Month. This momentum and state-by-state action was used as the rationale to lobby Congress to declare the entire month of March 1987 as National Women’s History Month. In 1987, Congress declared March as National Women’s History Month in perpetuity. A special Presidential Proclamation is issued every year which honors the extraordinary achievements of American women.
Each year National Women’s History Month employs a unifying theme and recognizes national honorees whose work and lives testify to that theme. For 2015, the theme is “Weaving the Stories of Women’s Lives.” This year’s theme presents the opportunity to weave women’s stories – individually and collectively – into the essential fabric of our nation’s history. Accounts of the lives of individual women are critically important because they reveal exceptionally strong role models who share a more expansive vision of what a woman can do. The stories of women’s lives, and the choices they made, encourage girls and young women to think larger and bolder, and give boys and men a fuller understanding of the female experience. Knowing women’s achievements challenges stereotypes and upends social assumptions about who women are and what women can accomplish today.
There is a real power in hearing women’s stories, both personally and in a larger context. Remembering and recounting tales of our ancestors’ talents, sacrifices, and commitments inspires today’s generations and opens the way to the future.
DEOMI’s illustrator, Mr. Peter Hemmer, described this year’s poster, saying “Our committee developed the idea to feature a collage of items showing various methods of communication (letters, postcards, journals, photos, books, newspapers, mementos, and art) which women through time have used to tell their own stories. In a simple way, I have illustrated the theme by weaving together representations of the stories of women’s lives.”
All DEOMI observance month poster files are in the public domain unless otherwise indicated.
For more information about National Women’s History Month, please visit The National Women’s History Project at:
http://www.nwhp.org/whm/history.php
