The University of New Mexico

03/03/2026 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 03/03/2026 16:35

UNM celebrates Women’s History Month

Women's History Month was officially designated in 1987 as a monthlong celebration recognizing the many contributions of women to society. Contributions that have often been overlooked in history books and other narratives. March was chosen to align with International Women's Day, which is observed annually March 8.

This month's celebration began as a weeklong observance. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter issued the first Presidential Proclamation declaring the week of March 8 as National Women's History Week, paving the way for what would become Women's History Month.

The University of New Mexico has been celebrating women's contributions since 1972, when the Women's Resource Center was opened, which provides a place for advocacy, support and safety for all members of the UNM and greater community.

Each March, UNM's Anthropology Department also helps recognize these contributions by compiling faculty research, departments, events, and resources together in a dedicated webpage to share with the UNM community. Listed below are a few of these efforts that recognize women's efforts.

Women's Resource Center

The Women's Resource Center is a place of advocacy, support, and safety for all members of the University of New Mexico and the greater community. Through a feminist empowerment model, we offer educational, social, and cultural programming to encourage women's self-determination and community engagement. The Women's Resource Center provides the tools and resources necessary to enhance success within academic, personal, and professional aspects of students' lives.

Áine McCarthy is the director of the Women's Resource Center and is proud to be serving in this capacity. She started at UNM in 2020 as an advocate supporting student survivors on campus. She previously worked at Upaya Institute and Zen Center in Santa Fe as co-director of the Professional Buddhist Chaplaincy Training Program. She is also an ordained Buddhist chaplain with a background in working with women in prison and offering creative and contemplative programming for women and femmes cultivating post-traumatic growth after Intimate Partner Violence.

Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program

The Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies program is committed to educating students about the relationships among identity, power and knowledge toward the ends of social justice and empowerment. The program supports the development and application of new theories in feminist, queer and transgender studies throughout the university, and the application of feminist, queer, and transgender methods to critically evaluate scholarship and research in the disciplines. In addition, the program seeks to educate students in ways that enable them to respond to issues that affect the lives of all people locally, regionally and globally."

Sarah Davis-Secord is the program director for the Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies program and associate professor in the UNM Department of History. Her research focuses on the interactions of individuals and groups across religious and cultural divisions in the medieval Mediterranean region. Gender and sexuality are fundamental and central components of all human interactions, but medieval Mediterranean historians have only recently begun investigating the roles of women, gender, and sexuality in the context of cross-cultural encounters.


UNM Women Scholars

Barbara Rodriguez, a professor of speech and hearing sciences, is the interim provost for Academic Affairs. Rodríguez is the co-project director of CLASS for ALL-NM, a collaborative personnel preparation training grant with New Mexico State University, funded by the U.S. Department of Education. This project is designed to train graduate students in bilingual speech-language pathology. She is the recipient of the American Speech-Language and Hearing Association's (ASHA) Certificate for Special Contributions in Multicultural Affairs, an ASHA Diversity Champion, New Mexico Speech-Language and Hearing Association (NMSHA) Fellow and NMSHA Honors of the Association recipient. She has held a number of leadership positions on local and national professional boards." Read more.

Melissa Emery Thompson is professor of anthropology, co-director of the Comparative Human and Primate Physiology Center at UNM and co-director of the Kibale Chimpanzee Project in Uganda. She was appointed Assistant vice president for Research in the UNM Provost office in the Fall of 2021. She has received extensive funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for her research. She is currently leading a project funded by the National Institute on Aging examining the human aging process by studying one of our closest relatives, chimpanzees. Read more.

Tiffany S. Lee (Diné /Lakota) is Dibé Łizhiní (Blacksheep) and born for Naałaní (Oglala Lakota). She is from Crystal, New Mexico, located on the Navajo Nation, on her mother's side and Pine Ridge, South Dakota on her father's side. Lee is a professor and former chair of Native American Studies at The University of New Mexico. She earned her doctorate in Sociology of Education from Stanford University. Her research examines Native youth perspectives on language reclamation and identity. She also investigates socio-culturally centered educational approaches. In 2016, she was awarded a grant from the Spencer Foundation to examine the impact of Indigenous language immersion schools on Native American student achievement. Read more.

A few events celebrating Women's History Month

The University of New Mexico published this content on March 03, 2026, and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed via Public Technologies (PUBT), unedited and unaltered, on March 03, 2026 at 22:49 UTC. If you believe the information included in the content is inaccurate or outdated and requires editing or removal, please contact us at [email protected]