The National Portrait Gallery website offers us an interactive version of the traveling exhibition, Women of Our Time: Twentieth Century Photographs from the National Portrait Gallery. The images featured are studio portraits, glamour shots, press photographs, advertising images and amateur snapshots paired with short, informative biographies of some of twentieth-century America's most famous and influential women.
The website has an introduction that begins with, "Of all the landmark changes in twentieth-century America, one of the most significant was the changing role of women and their growing importance in all branches of endeavor." In 1975, the United Nations began sponsoring International Women's Day to honor women everywhere but they deserved recognition before 1975. Women were devoted to the cause of labor, being part of the Revolution in the early 1900's and organizing against militarism and war and many other things.
In 1987, Congress expanded the celebration to a month and March was declared Women's History Month. "As one such example followed another in ever quicker succession, the broadening range of opportunity for women has become an irreversible fact of American life and a reflection of women's achievement."
