(Photo by Lauren Gilger- KJZZ)

Heidi Osselaer said that, while we assume Arizona history is full of cowboys and miners and rancher, “women were here too, and women often had to work.”

When you think about Arizona history, what comes to mind? Gun fights at the OK Corral? Copper mining towns, missionaries or cowboys?

Well, there’s another side to those stories.

And, Friday, historians, archivists and researchers will gather in the Valley to highlight Arizona women’s history.

The Arizona Women’s History Symposium Friday is focused this year on “Women at Work: From the Family Economy to the Workplace.”

Everything from Tohono O’odham women potters to women entrepreneurs in the brothel business in early Arizona will be discussed.

Their goal, according to presenter Heidi Osselaer, is to highlight the fact that there is research being

done on women in our state’s history and, hopefully, to encourage more of it.

Osselaer is an historian, teacher and writer who will be presenting on the women of Route 66 at the symposium.

She said that, while we assume Arizona history is full of cowboys and miners and rancher, “women were here too, and women often had to work.”

In the early 1900s, Osselaer said that nationwide about 15 percent of married women worked outside of the home. “In Arizona, it was 40 percent,” she said.

“The economy was very much boom and bust, and women went back to teach school after they had their children, they took in borders, they washed laundry, they ran restaurants, they did all kinds of things to put food on the table,” she said.

Osselaer said women are often overlooked in history, especially when it comes to the Wild West tales of the Southwest. So, it’s important to hold symposiums like this, to highlight the research that’s going on regarding women in Arizona history, and how diverse that group was.

“I think you’re seeing a little bit more of an effort to incorporate them into our history courses and our history books,” she said, “But, it’s been a long time coming.”