In May 2012, Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar introduced a new Secretarial initiative focusing on women's history. The National Park Service Women's History Initiative projects explore how the legacy of Women can be recognized, preserved, and interpreted for future generations. Projects vary from increased interpretation, collaboration with community organizations, and the production of scholarly documentation.
What are National Historic Landmark Theme Studies?
National Historic Landmarks are often identified through theme studies.Theme studies are an effective way of identifying and nominating properties because they provide a comparative analysis of properties associated with a specific area of American history, such as the fur trade, earliest Americans, women's history, Greek Revival architecture, Man in Space, or labor history. Theme studies provide a national historic context for specific topics in American history or prehistory. In order to make the case for national significance, a theme study must provide that necessary national historic context so that national significance may be judged for a number of related properties.
Theme Studies that highlight Women's history:
World War II and the American Home Front (.pdf | 7.2MB): The purpose of this study is to identify historic places that best represent the wartime mobilization that occurred in the United States and its territories and possessions between 1939 and 1945. This context gives a general overview of the wartime home front and provides more detail about how ordinary men, women, and children reacted to sometimes overwhelming population movements, to the absence of fathers and brothers in the military, to massive, if temporary, changes in women's roles, and to the all-pervasive presence of the war in popular culture.
Last updated: March 29, 2018