It’s no secret that most social studies curricula in the United States are crammed full of narratives about white men. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard about George Washington crossing the Delaware River, yet every history class I’ve taken seems to come and go without any discussion of people who look like me.

There's no mention of the Chinese laborers instrumental in constructing the transcontinental railroad; little discussion of the more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans wrongly placed in internment camps during World War II; and, critically, no commemoration of the countless Asian-Americans who changed the course of U.S. history.

Asian-Americans, especially Asian-American women, are often pigeonholed as meek or unassertive, rather than depicted as leaders. The roots of these stereotypes lie in the erasure of Asian trailblazers in history.

The erasure of Asian women from history has a profoundly negative impact on Asian-American women everywhere: It helps perpetuate the “bamboo ceiling,” a phenomenon in which, despite often succeeding in the workforce, Asian women continue to be systematically shut out of leadership positions. Today, of all groups divided by race and gender, they are the least likely to become executives. Despite the 2018 midterms that saw a historic number of Asian women — and women of color, in general — elected to Congress, there are only 11 Asian women in the legislature, comprising just 2 percent of its body.

Representation matters, not just in Hollywood, but in our curricula and cultural consciousness. These women’s stories matter. In a country where the contributions of women of color are often pushed to the sidelines, there’s no time like Women’s History Month to celebrate the impact Asian-American women have had on history and our lives.

Yuri Kochiyama, revolutionary civil rights activist

During her childhood, Yuri Kochiyama was deeply impacted by her forced relocation to a Japanese internment camp, and later, her friendship as an adult with Malcolm X, and helped define American activism in the 20th century.

Kochiyama began her work in advocacy in her 30s by organizing school boycotts to demand desegregated education for inner-city children in New York City’s Harlem. She spent the rest of her life advocating for Black, Latinx, Native American, and Asian-American communities. In the 1980s, Kochiyama and her husband pushed for reparations to the Japanese-Americans who had been incarcerated during World War II and a formal apology from the government. The campaign succeeded, and led to the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.

Her verbal support of certain radically left figures, like Chinese communist revolutionary Mao Zedong, made her a complex and sometimes controversial figure, especially posthumously, but Kochiyama’s impact on history is undeniable.

Patsy Mink, the first woman of color in Congress

Patsy Takemoto Mink made waves when she was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1964, representing Hawaii’s 2nd Congressional District. Although she was born in the U.S., her family was from Japan. In the workforce, the odds were stacked against her: Law firms refused to hire her, telling her that women should stay home to care for their children. After being elected, she was one of only eight women in Congress at that time.

Once in office, Mink championed the fight against the inequity that she had faced. Most people in the U.S. have heard of Title IX, the landmark legislation that prohibits gender discrimination in education, but many do not realize that Mink was one of two principal authors and sponsors of the bill, and even penned its first draft. To this day, Title IX’s influence lives on, a vital tool in the fight against discrimination and sexual harassment in classrooms and in school sports.