Behind every great man is a great woman.The month of March is designated Women’s History Month to honor the women who significantly influenced history. The LSU Women’s Center hosted “Women in the Performing Arts Night” to celebrate the artistic talents of women. The event featured nine performances of storytelling, dancing and singing on Wednesday in the International Cultural Center.Ellen Peneguy, assistant troupe leader of Jawahiir al Nour, said the belly-dancing troupe of six women performed in the show for its good cause.”Belly dance as a genre is very much about women being together,” she said. This event has been a part of the University’s celebration of Women’s History Month for more than 10 years, said Catherine Hopkins, LSU Women’s Center director, in an e-mail to The Daily Reveille.”Women have made many important contributions to society that go unrecognized,” Hopkins said. “Fire escapes, Kevlar, medical syringes, windshield wipers, engine mufflers and rotary engines were all invented by women.”Other University events dedicated to Women’s History Month will include a community service project for the YWCA of Greater Baton Rouge, a Women in the Arts Gallery, a Women’s Networking and Business Etiquette Dinner and a Keynote Address and Esprit de Femme Awards ceremony featuring an array of nationally recognized women such as Grammy winner Irma Thomas.Jesse Downs, assistant director of Job Search at Career Services, said this is the second year Career Services is collaborating with the Women’s Center to have the Etiquette Dinner for Women’s History Month.”This is an opportunity to bring together women in the professional realm to meet with our students, share their career paths and guide them through etiquette,” Downs said.Downs said having women at the dinner will make for a more comfortable networking experience since all attendees will have something in common: their gender.The Etiquette Dinner will be March 25 at the Faculty Club.The Women Organizing Women student organization will also host a Women’s History Month party on March 22 to raise awareness about women’s influence in history at the Women’s Center.”For this year’s theme, we’re doing ‘riot grrrl,’ which was a cool, feminist, punk rock movement in the early ’90s,” said Julia Bent, WOW president and women’s and genders studies senior. “There’s a whole other side to history that people don’t know because history was written by men.”The National Women’s History Project was founded in 1980, when less than 3 percent of the content in textbooks mentioned the contributions of women to history, according to the NWHP’s Web site. That year, the NWHP began lobbying for the government to recognize women’s role in history on a yearly basis.”In 1980, President Carter issued the first Presidential Proclamation recognizing Women’s History Week,” said a March 1 NWHP news release. “In 1987, this national celebration was expanded by Congressional Resolution to an entire month by declaring March as National Women’s History Month.”The NWHP will celebrate the 30th anniversary of its accomplishment this year. The theme is “Writing Women Back into History” and will highlight different aspects of women’s achievements in art, ecology, sports and politics.Hopkins said most celebratory months like Women’s History Month and Black History Month exist because the groups celebrated are “historically marginalized.”Eric Odenheimer, psychology senior, said not having a month dedicated to men’s history is OK because most of history is men’s history anyway.–Contact Mary Walker Baus at [email protected]