“It’s always important to go back and recognize,” Greenwell said. “I don’t think you can appreciate the opportunities that you have at present without going back historically to see who you’ve come from.”

Coming from a university that admitted its first 10 female students in 1870, to a campus where women total 52.8 percent of the campus population at the start of the 2010 fall semester, according to the MSU Office of Planning and Budget’s website, MSU has paved a way for women in education.

An expansion from the March 8th holiday of International Women’s Day, Women’s History Month is a chance to celebrate women who have given new identities and voices to women who previously haven’t been displayed, Greenwell said.

Present
Supporting women’s leadership and finding a university that values, represents and celebrates that right provides a certain kind of power and validity that is extremely important, said Mary Phillips, a coordinator in the Office of Cultural and Academic Transitions, who identifies as a black feminist.

“It’s important as a woman to be aware of how to kind of navigate this and how to understand your history, particularly as a woman of color,” she said.

Although MSU is a leader in the number of women pursuing higher education, Michigan still is behind in some other factors, such as equal wages.

The earnings of women represent 72.4 percent of men’s earnings, according to the state’s website. Ranking as the 43rd state with the worst earnings, realities such as this play into the wage gap, said Deanna Hurlbert, the liaison of the LBGT Resource Center.

“We don’t regard work that women do as highly as we regard work that men have done,” she said.

And although women have more of a presence on campus now — with more than half of the undergraduate student body being women — they still are significantly left out of the history books of the past, Patricia Rogers, an assistant professor in the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities said in an e-mail.

“One of the primary issues being that women were not seen as actors in the major arenas that constituted history (such as politics, military, and economics),” she said. “Often, when women are present in the historical record, they become invisible because we do not expect to see women ‘there.’”

With women representing a large portion of the population, it increases the rationale that the role women have played in history needs to be expressed at a higher rate, Rogers said.

Others, such as Paulette Granberry Russell, director of the Office for Inclusion & Intercultural Initiatives agree, but more so looks toward the future.

“When you look at the future of work force needs, we need to encourage greater girl and woman participation in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) disciplines,” she said.
“We need woman at the table as engineers, we need woman at the table of sciences (because) those things influence (things such as) health care … otherwise we will continue to be relegated to lower paying positions.”

Progression
Being valued as an equal counterpart while embracing one’s femininity can bring about negative connotations because of the fear the term “feminist” stirs up, Phillips said.

“Feminism is a movement,” she said. “Its a political movement that very much works against the simultaneous oppressions that woman of color face, everywhere.”

Breaking the movement down into sectors, the feminist movement represents issues including stereotypes against women, sexual assault and exploitation, Phillips said.

“Women get discriminated against often in different sectors because of the stereotypes,” she said.
“You’re kind of boxed in, and if you don’t fulfill those stereotypes, you’re marked as different.”
Stepping out of the traditional roles in addition to being be radical and feminist for equity and equality should be allowed, Granberry Russell said.

“Women’s issues may be different based on one’s background, one’s race, gender identity — woman are very different,” she said. “Women’s issues cannot be seen through one lens.”