Public Media Highlights History-Making Women During Women’s History Month

Suneeta reports on an illegal mining mafia in the heartlands of Uttar Pradesh in the Oscar-nominated Writing With Fire, airing March 28 on PBS’ Independent Lens.   Photo courtesy Black Ticket Films

From profiles of female pioneers like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and conductor Marin Alsop, to journalists breaking gender and caste barriers in India, public media highlights a range of stories about remarkable women throughout March, Women’s History Month. Here’s a sampling:

PBS

PBS offers a viewer’s guide of programming airing this month and streaming on PBS.org and the PBS App, and learning resources on PBS LearningMedia. Broadcast premieres (times may vary; check local listings)

• Bring Her Home (10 pm ET, March 21) follows three Indigenous women working to vindicate and honor missing and murdered female relatives. The co-production of Twin Cities PBS and Vision Maker Media is produced and directed by Leya Hale.

 

• Pelosi’s Power (9 pm ET, March 22). FRONTLINE airs a 90-minute documentary examining how House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has gained and wielded power, all while facing challenges to her leadership and to American democracy.

• The Conductor (9 pm ET, March 25) Great Performances profiles Marin Alsop, who as a 9-year-old violinist longed to conduct and ultimately became music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the first female conductor of a major symphony. The film features rehearsal and performance footage from Baltimore, Brazil, Switzerland, New York City, and previously unseen archival footage of Alsop with her mentor, Leonard Bernstein.

• Writing With Fire (10 pm, March 28). This Oscar-nominated documentary, airing on Independent Lens, follows the journalists of India’s only all-female newspaper as they fight both gender and caste discrimination as they report from dangerous areas in India.

WORLD Channel

WORLD Channel, the multicast public television channel available in approximately 70% of TV households, offers a slate of Women’s History Month premieres and encore programs, broadcasting and streaming online. Its broadcast premieres: 

• For the Love of Rutland  (8 pm ET, March 3). America ReFramed tells the story of how Stacie Griffin, a longtime Rutland resident shamed by poverty and addiction, emerges as a leader as Syrian Refugees are resettled in the Vermont town, dividing people by class, values, and politics.

• Dear Homeland (March 27). Dear Homeland follows Mexican singer/songwriter and immigration activist Diana Gameros and her struggle to change her status so she can return to her homeland. This KQED production will also stream at the KQED Arts YouTube Channel.

Radio

• NPR Music’s Turning the Tables will hold weekly discussions centered on Records That Changed Our Lives, starting with Ann Powers and Marissa Lorusso on how one’s love for a record can change over the course of our lives, featuring records by Yoko Ono and Kate Bush.
• NPR Live Sessions, managed by VuHaus Corp.,  features female artists on its home page throughout the month, starting with a clip from KUTX (Austin) of Margo Price performing “Pay Gap.”
• Jazz Night in America (NPR/WBGO) will present a new installment of the "Crate Digging" series featuring a rare, unearthed 1991 concert from balladeer, pianist, and vocalist Shirley Horn.
• Local stations recognize Women’s History Month in a variety of ways, such as Denver’s Urban Alternative station The Drop 107.4, which is partnering with community organizations to offer on-air vignettes, social media posts, blogs and a Girls & Science event at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.

Online

• StoryCorps has compiled a Women’s History Month story collection featuring StoryCorps conversations between women from all backgrounds, including stories from women in roles that have been hard-hit by the pandemic, as well as women in medicine, mothers, and teachers.
• PBS’s American Experience has compiled an online Women in American History collection, streaming digital shorts and American Experience features such as “Annie Oakley” and “Emma Goldman” biographies; “The Vote,” about the suffrage movement; “The Codebreaker” about cryptanalyst Elizabeth Smith Friedman; “Voice of Freedom” about singer Marian Anderson. Articles, photos and interactives are also included.
• Season 3 of Pacific Pulse, a series of digital shorts from the CPB-supported Pacific Islanders in Communications, premieres in March and features Reel Wāhine of Hawai‘i,  in which all-female crews document stories of Hawai‘i women filmmakers preserving Hawai‘i history and culture through film.

Unladylike2020 digital shorts, including one on Mexican American activist and journalist Jovita Idar, will be available with Spanish subtitles on YouTube this month.

• Unladylike2020, a series of 26 digital short films about little-known American heroines and the women who follow in their footsteps, will be available with Spanish subtitles by March 8, International Women’s Day, on the American Masters YouTube channel. The series, along with a one-hour American Masters special Unladylike2020: The Changemakers, premiered in 2020 in connection with the centennial of the passage of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote. Through the Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford University, students in second-year Spanish-language courses translated the 26 short films and supporting educational materials. The standards-aligned digital learning resources created by The WNET Group’s Kids’ Media & Education team are now available in Spanish at PBS LearningMedia. To learn more, visit unladylike2020.org 

Unladylike2020 educational resources, including lesson plans and handouts about Latina botanist Ynés Mexía, are available in Spanish at PBSLearningMedia.org 

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