By GABRIELLE MARTIN, Staff Reporter.
In celebration of Women’s History Month, Delta Professor Laura Dull will lead an event that looks at women through history who have dared to step forward to become leaders, scientists, philanthropists and many other roles.
Women Who Dared will take place on Delta’s main campus at 9 a.m. on Wednesday March 18. It will start with a presentation by Dull about some of the important women who are not often heard of such as Hatshepsut, a female Pharaoh who led Egypt through a time of great prosperity and Katherina Von Bora, wife of Martin Luther.
Event attendees will have the opportunity to talk about some of the women who have played crucial roles in their own lives as well.
Participants will then go through a tour of Delta to see the 44 cutouts of influential women that will be set up around campus. Dull says that when this event started several years ago, there were only three cutouts but the display has continued to grow year by year.
A virtual tour of women through history is also available atwww.womenwhodared.omeka.net.
“We just really feel the need for people to understand the role that women have played not just in American history but in history across the globe,” says Dull. She explained that so often we only hear about war and politics, which are male dominated, in history classes.
“I became a historian because I was fascinated by the role women played in history,” says Dull. She says it wasn’t something that was necessarily taught in her K-12 education.
Dull says last year local members of Girls on the Run came to Delta’s campus to do a scavenger hunt of the cutouts. Girls on the Run is an organization that uses running to help teach young girls the importance of self-confidence, the value of relationships, and how they impact and shape the world.
After the scavenger hunt, the girls took a vote to decide who their favorite woman was. Their choice was Malala Yousafzai. Yousafzai is a Pakistani-born woman and advocate for educational rights for girls and women. In 2012, she survived being shot in the head by the Taliban after demanding that women and girls have access to education.
This year, a local group of Girl Scouts are invited to come to campus and do the scavenger hunt.
“[This event] gives the chance for everybody from girl scouts to college students to our 50+ people to learn about women through history,” says Dull.
Tickets for the event cost $29. For more information, contact the LifeLong Learning Office at (989) 686-9444 or lifelonglearning@delta.edu.