League of Women Voters honors four elected officials for Women’s History Month

Name 10 important women in history and their accomplishments.

That was the quiz Natalie Naylor would give her students in a women’s history class she taught at Hofstra.

On average students could name three, Naylor said.

Swap that to men, and students had no problem reaching 10, she said.

“It’s obvious the history we learned in school and college has been literally his story,” Naylor said during a keynote speech at a League of Women Voters of Nassau County event on Sunday. “And that’s why we need her story.”

Celebrating “Herstory as History” was the theme of the day, when the league honored four women in local government for Women’s History Month.

The honorees were Nassau County Executive Laura Curran, Town of Hempstead Supervisor Laura Gillen, Nassau County Clerk Maureen O’Connell and Nassau County District Court Judge Andrea Phoenix.

North Hempstead Town Supervisor Judi Bosworth, along with Councilwoman Lee Seeman and Councilwoman Anna Kaplan, also recognized the honorees at the event held at Verdi’s of Westbury.

Assemblyman Anthony D’Urso also attended the event.

Naylor, who is the author of “Women in Long Island’s Past: A History of Eminent Ladies and Everyday Lives,” said that even when women are recognized for historic accomplishments, they’re typically kept out of local history.

In her speech she highlighted several women, including Rosalie Gardiner Jones, who organized a suffrage hike from the Bronx to Albany in 1912.

Last November marked 100 years since women got the right to vote in New York, a right the state granted three years before the country.

Last November was also when Nassau voters elected their first female county executive, Curran.

While it is important have firsts, with women leading the way into territory formerly held by men, it is vital to go beyond them, Naylor said.

Women like Gillen, Bosworth and U.S. Rep. Kathleen Rice, who are not the first to hold their positions, but are the “second and counting” are an important piece to the puzzle “so women in political office can become as common as men,” Naylor said.

Naylor discussed a speech given by Marilyn Goldstein, a Newsday journalist and columnist, at a 1996 conference at Hofstra University.

Goldstein spoke about Long Island in the 1970s, which she called a “hot pit of feminism,” according to Naylor.

Goldstein said during her speech that the energy came from the ground that was gained.

“When you start from zero, everything is up,” Goldstein had said.

The movement did not continue at the same pace, Goldstein had said, because the next generations of women grew up not understanding that those advances had to be fought for in the not-so-distant past.

To them, the right to have a credit card or apply for any job was no more immediate in history than “the Spanish Inquisition,” Goldstein said.

Another roadblock Goldstein mentioned in the 90s, and Naylor argued is still present, is that change did not need to come from laws but rather from attitudes.

“It’s easier to legislate than change the thinking,” Goldstein said.

Those attitudes are starting to shift again, though, Gillen said.

Gillen said she’s encouraged by all the women elected this year, a trend she said is likely to continue.

“[We’re] seeing now a level of engagement of young people and young girls who all of a sudden think ‘This is something I might do,'” Gillen said.