March Is Women’s History Month

March is Women’s History Month, a chance to honor the achievements and experiences of women around the world. Instead of giving links to a handful of potted biographies, I’m going to share various quotes during the month about the role of women throughout history. The quotes are meant to show a variety of viewpoints, but not to be comprehensive or representative of all women’s thinking.

I’ll start with one from Christine de Pisan, a 14th-15th-century writer and daughter of the astrologer to Charles V, King of France. After her husband’s death, she supported herself and her three children by her writing, one of the first women to do so. In The Book of the City of Ladies, she writes in defense of women’s contributions to history and learning, offering a number of examples:

It seems to me that neither in the teaching of Aristotle, which has been of great profit to human intelligence and which is so highly esteemed and with good reason, nor in that of all the other philosophers who have ever lived, could an equal benefit for the world be found as that which has been accrued and still accrues through the works accomplished by virtue of the knowledge possessed by these ladies.