This commentary is by Amelie Fairweather, a student at Champlain Valley Union High School in Hinesburg.
Even as the nation celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, women’s history is still not taught in Vermont schools. Right now, there is no requirement in the state curriculum to teach women’s suffrage as part of U.S. history classes.
In 2025, I founded Her Education Required, a national organization dedicated to integrating women’s history into social studies curricula. It started with a handful of students in a classroom in Vermont who never expected it to grow beyond their school walls, yet today Her Education Required stands as the largest youth-led network for women’s rights in Vermont.
As word has spread on social media, girls from across the nation have started HER chapters at their schools. There are even now HER chapters in Singapore and Kenya.
In not requiring U.S. social studies classes to include women’s history, we’re not just missing the full, accurate version of history. We’re leaving out one of the greatest examples of the American idea that we celebrate on the Fourth of July: that individual citizens have the freedom and power to unite collectively, question their government, and impose their will over the powerful.
When the Declaration of Independence was adopted in 1776, it boldly and radically required that government have the consent of the governed. However, women were not allowed to participate in that consent. They couldn’t run for president or Congress, or sit on the Supreme Court. They couldn’t even vote for those running. Neither, of course, could Black people or Indigenous groups. The Declaration of Independence held a promise, but not a reality, for all U.S. citizens.
In the mid-1800s, women demanded the U.S. government honor the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence by extending the right to participate in government to all people. After the American Civil War, women hoped the expansion of voting rights during Reconstruction would include them, but they were bitterly disappointed. The 14th Amendment in 1868 introduced the word “male” into the Constitution for the first time, specifying that voting rights applied only to men — an enormous setback for women. The 15th Amendment in 1870 then prohibited denying the vote based on race, securing the franchise for Black men, but still excluded women entirely.
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Not until 1920 did women win a constitutional amendment — the 19th — giving them voting rights. In the 20th century, they overcame social and cultural barriers to stand for office and win elections. This Fourth of July marks 250 years of freedom, though fewer than 100 years of that freedom has been extended to women. But this isn’t a rebuke of the founding documents — it is an endorsement of their endurance and strength. Why leave this out of the history books?
America has always been a work in progress and an attempt to live up to its founding ideals. That is what we recognize every July, and that is the main point of including women’s journeys in social studies classes: A group of powerless women challenged the powerful and effected change because of the prescience and brilliance of our founding documents.
This 250-year-old belief in our unalienable rights pervades society through repetition, practice and our education systems. Students’ understandings of their liberties are subject to the teaching of their curricula, and these vary state by state. To a girl living in Vermont, the right to an abortion is automatic. For a girl in Texas, this is not the case. Make no mistake: Our rights as women are in many ways subject to our understanding of them. It is essential, therefore, that students understand their rights, where they came from and how they can maintain them.
For more than a decade, advocates have pushed to give the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum a permanent home on the National Mall. Currently, it operates only online. The legislation to secure a site has repeatedly stalled. Most recently, in May, a bill to approve construction failed in the House, with all Democrats and six Republicans opposing it.
Recently, at the 2026 Turning Point USA Women’s Leadership Summit, which drew roughly 2,000 young female right-wing activists, mostly Gen Z and Millennials, some speakers denounced the 19th Amendment and encouraged women to give up their right to vote and to submit to men.
This sort of thing happens when people are ignorant of their history. When the first female governor of Vermont, Madeleine Kunin, spoke at a recent HER event, she described suffragists chaining themselves to fences and being beaten for demanding their right to vote. Yet, when my organization surveyed students at Champlain Valley Union High School, more than 70% said they hadn’t ever received lessons on women’s history and didn’t know what a suffragette was.
The best way to honor all that is great about America is to tell its full, beautiful story as a radical idea that we are all wrestling to live up to. It’s honest and inspiring, and it includes all of us.
