Women’s History Month traces its origins to Santa Rosa, California, where a local celebration of women’s contributions began in 1978 before expanding nationally. 

In 1980, President Jimmy Carter issued the first presidential proclamation honoring Women’s History Week, writing:

“From the first settlers who came to our shores, from the first American Indian families who befriended them, men and women have worked together to build this nation. Too often the women were unsung and sometimes their contributions went unnoticed. But the achievements, leadership, courage, strength and love of the women who built America was as vital as that of the men whose names we know so well.” 

His words remind us that women’s history is inseparable from the story of the nation itself. California—birthplace of the movement—remains a fitting landscape for examining how women shape and are shaped by place.

Presented during Women’s History Month, this series honors mothers and daughters from San Francisco to Sacramento to Santa Barbara. Together, they reveal a state defined not only by its mythology of freedom and opportunity, but by its contradictions and the intimate negotiations between mothers and their children—where identity is shaped, resisted, and ultimately reimagined.