Wilson

August will mark the 100th anniversary of women’s right to vote, and historian Kathy Wilson believes women’s rights remain a very relevant topic today.

Wilson will present her program “The Vote is the Emblem of Our Equality: Victorians and the Fight for Women’s Rights” at 2 p.m. March 28 at the Marshalltown Public Library. It will address the difficulties suffragettes faced in securing their right to vote, why women of color were excluded from the movement and how the fight still continues today.

The program is part of a series of presentations entitled Programs to Go! in which Wilson visits libraries across Iowa. Her goal is to engage people in history and help them see its current relevance.

“When it becomes personal, it becomes relevant,” she said.

Wilson said that many become disengaged from history because they are taught to associate it with the memorization of dates and military battles.

“I’m all about the stories,” she said. “Your history is based on a collection of stories.”

Wilson began Programs to Go! in February of 2016.

After her job was eliminated, a librarian friend suggested that Wilson take her expertise to libraries around Iowa. She began converting her lessons to Powerpoint presentations.

It was an immediate hit, growing into 100 programs a year.

“It was all the perks of teaching without any of the headache,” Wilson said.

A professional historian and educator, she received her BA in History from Bemidji State University in Minnesota, then completed her Masters at the University of York in England. Wilson specializes in 18th and 19th-century British-American cultural history.

Wilson attributes her success to the programs’ focus on the root of the issue.

“One of the reasons I think my programs are really popular is what my mother would call the pot roast approach,” she said.

Wilson told the story of a woman who cut the fat off a pot roast before putting it in the oven, then bagged the fat and put it in the freezer. When her husband questioned her, she wasn’t sure why she did it. After a few calls, she found out the practice began with her grandmother, who saved the fat for summers when she used it to make soaps.

Wilson said sexism works in the same way; People are taught habits and do them automatically, even when they’re no longer relevant.

She believes the biases women face date back a couple centuries.

“All of those things are predicated on beliefs from the early 19th century,” she said.

Wilson noted that these beliefs, such as that women are less intelligent and inherently inferior to men, have all been disproven.

“Once you can identify the underlying causes … then you can treat the problem,” she said.

Wilson believes women are still facing many problems today, such as inequality in the workplace, sexual harrassment and lack of access to childcare.

“I want people to understand why we’re still fighting this uphill battle,” she said.

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Contact Anna Shearer at 641-753-6611