Women's History Month 2026: Origin, History & Supporting Women-Owned Businesses in Vancouver, WA

By Cassandra Marks, top-rated real estate agent, relocation specialist, farmer, chicken mom, and proud women-owned business owner serving Vancouver, WA and the Portland metro. 5.0 ⭐ · 50+ Reviews · 110+ Homes Sold · $60.1M in Sales.

Every March, something shifts. Schools dust off the names of women who deserved more than a footnote. Companies post pink graphics. The word "celebrate" gets thrown around a lot. And then April arrives, and most of it quietly disappears until next year.

I'm Cassandra Marks — Realtor Cas — and I run a women-owned real estate business in Vancouver, WA. Women's History Month is personal to me. Not because I need a month to feel validated, but because I know exactly how much work the women who came before me had to do just to make room for me to exist in this industry. And I know how much work there still is to do.

So this year I want to do Women's History Month right. That means understanding where it actually came from — because the origin story is genuinely remarkable and most people don't know it. And then it means taking that history and turning it into action — specifically, the kind of action that creates real economic impact for the women-owned businesses that are building our community in Vancouver, WA and Southwest Washington right now.

History and action. That's what this post is about. Let's go.

💜 What Is Women's History Month?

Women's History Month is an annual observance dedicated to recognizing and celebrating the contributions of women to American — and global — history, culture, science, business, and society. It's observed every March in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

The key word there is recognizing. Because for most of documented history, the contributions of women were systematically excluded from the official record. The textbooks, the encyclopedias, the statues, the Nobel Prizes, the history curricula — the story of civilization was largely told as if women were spectators rather than architects. Women's History Month exists to correct that. Not just to add women to the margin of a story that's already been written, but to reframe who the story is actually about.

Each year, the National Women's History Alliance designates an official theme. For 2026, that theme is "Moving Forward Together: Women Educating & Inspiring Generations" — a tribute to the teachers, mentors, mothers, coaches, and community leaders who shape who we become, usually without a byline.

📅 When Is Women's History Month — And When Did It Start?

Women's History Month is every year in March — all 31 days. March 8th is also International Women's Day, a global observance that's been around since 1911 and in many ways planted the seed for everything that followed.

As for when Women's History Month started — the short answer is 1987, when Congress officially designated the full month of March. But the real origin story begins nearly a decade earlier, in a school district in Northern California, and it's a story that sounds exactly like something a group of determined women would do. Which is to say: they saw something wrong, and they fixed it themselves.

🌱 The Origin of Women's History Month: The Story Most People Don't Know

Here's what I love about the origins of Women's History Month: it didn't come from Washington, D.C. It didn't come from a presidential directive or a congressional mandate. It came from educators and advocates in Sonoma County, California who were tired of teaching a version of history that left half the population out.

1978 — Sonoma County, California: It Starts in a Classroom

In 1978, the Education Task Force of the Sonoma County Commission on the Status of Women organized the first ever "Women's History Week." They scheduled it for the week of March 8th — deliberately aligned with International Women's Day — and centered it on getting women's contributions into local school curricula. The goal wasn't symbolic. It was practical: make sure kids in Sonoma County actually learn about the women who shaped this country.

The response was immediate and enthusiastic. Teachers loved having material. Students engaged in ways that surprised everyone. And word spread fast, because this wasn't a Sonoma County problem — it was an everywhere problem. School districts across the country started adopting the model.

1980 — President Carter Issues the First Proclamation

By 1980, the movement had grown enough that President Jimmy Carter issued the first official Presidential Proclamation declaring a National Women's History Week. His proclamation called on Americans to recognize the contributions of women who had helped shape the nation. It was meaningful — but still just one week.

1981–1986 — Congress Joins the Conversation

Through the early 1980s, advocacy organizations — particularly the National Women's History Project (now the National Women's History Alliance) — lobbied Congress year after year to expand the recognition. Congress passed annual resolutions supporting Women's History Week, and the groundswell kept building. One week was no longer enough room.

1987 — The Full Month Is Born

In 1987 — nine years after that first week in Sonoma County — Congress officially designated the entire month of March as National Women's History Month. Every U.S. President since has issued an annual proclamation. What started with a handful of educators asking a simple question — why aren't we teaching this? — became a national institution.

💡 Why Supporting Women-Owned Businesses Is the Best Way to Celebrate Women's History Month

Here's where I want to make a pivot — from history to right now. Because the women in your history books aren't the only ones making history. The women running businesses in Vancouver, Camas, Ridgefield, and across Southwest Washington are making it too. They just don't have a monument yet.

Women's History Month is a beautiful idea. But the most powerful version of it isn't a lesson plan or a social media post — it's an economic decision. When you consciously choose to spend your money at a women-owned business, you're:

• Keeping dollars circulating in your local economy
• Helping a woman pay her employees — often other women
• Supporting someone who likely reinvests heavily back into the community
• Sending a clear market signal that women's work has real, tangible value
• Writing a small piece of economic history that compounds over time

🌲 A Note From Me — A Woman Who Built Her Business Here

I think about the women in history a lot — the Susan B. Anthonys, the Harriet Tubmans, the Katherine Johnsons — when real estate gets hard. When someone questions my expertise in a room that didn't expect me to be there. When a negotiation gets brutal and I have to hold the line. Those women dealt with infinitely harder rooms. And they held the line too.

I started this business because I genuinely love helping people find their place in the world — and in this community specifically. Living in Vancouver, WA and the surrounding area, I see every single day how much the women here pour into their work, their families, and their neighbors.

Running a women-owned real estate business isn't always easy. Real estate is an industry where you have to prove yourself constantly — and as a woman, that bar is sometimes set a little higher. But I wouldn't trade it for anything. Because when I hand someone the keys to their first home, when I help a family relocate from California and watch them fall in love with the Pacific Northwest, when I negotiate a deal that saves someone tens of thousands of dollars — that's the work. And it matters.

This Women's History Month, I'm grateful for every client who chose to work with me, every colleague who's referred me, and every person who's left a review or shared a post. That support built this business. And I try to pay it forward by supporting the women around me too — because that's how this works. That's how it's always worked.