Kicking off Women’s History Month

By Shannon Sheehan | Published by March 22, 2019

The start of March represents the start of Women’s History Month, a time where society recognizes women, their accomplishments and also the hardships that women face based on their gender. Kean University is celebrating this month by holding a series of lectures, the first transpiring on Mar. 1, 2019.

The guest speaker for the first lecture was Dr. Christine Thorpe, the Dean of the Nathan Weiss Graduate College here at Kean University. She has a Bachelor’s Degree is psychology, Masters of education degree in international educational development and a Doctorate degree in health education, therefore she is very knowledgeable. Her areas of focus include women’s health and wellness, health disparities, holistic nutrition, patient navigation, health literacy and more.Ultimately, Thorpe has over 20 years of experience in her fields.

Dr. Thorpe’s lecture was titled, “Free from Slavery, Bound by Historical Traumas: The Economic Bondage of Chronic Health Issues Among African American and Native American Women.” After telling the audience about how she came to study this topic, which was through her doctoral program, she quickly jumped in to the topic.

The focus of Dr. Thorpe’s lecture was to explain that the historical trauma that women of African and Native American descent still impacts women to this day. Not only does it still impact women’s health, many women are not aware that there are medical services available to them because they are used to people of their descent being marginalized throughout history.

Dr. Thorpe went through a timeline of women’s history, only being able to focus on the key points due to the amount of women’s history that exists. It began with Christopher Columbus coming to the “new world,” even though it was not new to the indigenous people, and ended with the recent #MeToo movement.

She went on to explain how the historical trauma that has happened to African American and Native American women throughout history still impacts women today.

Dr. Thorpe explained it by saying, “Think of a memory that made you uncomfortable and how you react to that. Imagine those memories being shared from generation to generation. Imagine those memories being infused into you and being passed on not necessarily by verbatim story, by your own visceral reactions and certain circumstances around you.”

Situations such as being separated from one’s land, being bought and sold, and repeatedly being talked down to have major effects on people. When a woman today is discriminated against or oppressed, it trigger the memories of one’s ancestors and reminds them of the hardships that they have to go through.

Dr. Thorpe emphasized that it is important to be conscious of these facts, and important to remember them especially as Women’s History Month is being celebrated.

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