Women’s History Month: The Quiet Power Women Have Always Held And Why It Starts Earlier Than We Think
Women’s history is often told through moments of visibility: firsts, breakthroughs, movements, and milestones. We celebrate the women who stood on stages, signed laws, led organizations, and changed the course of history.
But much of women’s most powerful influence has never been visible.
It happened quietly, long before microphones, titles, or recognition. It happened in the earliest years of human life, when women shaped minds, nervous systems, confidence, and character before the world ever took notice.
Long before a child enters a classroom, raises her hand, or claims her voice, the foundation of who she will become is already forming. Neuroscience shows that the most rapid period of brain development occurs between birth and age six, but this window shapes far more than cognitive growth. During these years, a child’s personality, sense of self, emotional regulation, confidence, and capacity for relationships are being formed in response to movement, environment, autonomy, and emotional safety. These early experiences quietly shape how a person approaches the world, whether with curiosity or caution, resilience or self-doubt, long before she ever learns to name it.
This is not a footnote in human development. It is the blueprint.
And women have always been central to it.
Across generations, cultures, and communities, women have shaped the earliest environments of human life, often without language for the impact they were having, and rarely with societal recognition. The way a child is allowed to move, explore, struggle, and discover during these early years influences confidence, resilience, leadership, and lifelong learning.
Yet culturally, we have minimized this work.
We have treated early childhood as something to manage rather than honor.
We have measured productivity over presence.
We have overlooked the power of the years when the brain is most alive, most absorbent, and most vulnerable.
Women’s History Month invites us to expand the definition of influence.
Yes, we should celebrate women who changed laws and led movements. But we should also acknowledge the women who shaped humanity at its source, often invisibly, by nurturing curiosity, protecting autonomy, and fostering environments where human potential could take root.
Understanding the first six years of life doesn’t diminish women’s later achievements. It deepens them. It reminds us that leadership, courage, creativity, and compassion are not suddenly acquired in adulthood; they are cultivated early, through everyday interactions that are rarely seen as “history in the making.”
When we honor women’s history, we must also honor the earliest years where so much of that history begins.
This is the conversation I bring to organizations and communities during Women’s History Month, not to romanticize the past, but to illuminate the quiet, foundational power women have always held, and still hold today.
Because the most important years of history often happen first.
