tietjen talk about their book, her story, a timeline of women who changed america. the profiles include susan b anthony, birth control activist margaret sanger, and african american entrepreneur madam c.j. walker. this was recorded at a bookstore in denver in 2008. it's about 40 minutes. >> thank you and good evening. i am honored to be here tonight to introduce charlotte waisman and jill tietjen, authors of herstory, a timeline of women who changed america. when i first moved to denver in 1987, i described deal as the energizer bunny of women engineers. i don't know anyone who is busier with more stuff, whether it's in her professional life as a consultant, war her efforts on behalf of women in technology. the same can be said of charlotte, though she comes from very different professional experiences. with the background and communications, she has been instrumental informing the women's vision leadership institute, an organization devoted to helping women move from middle to upper management positions. so despite these disparate backgrounds, i find they are collaboration on this project unsurprising. they've both conquered hurdles and fought to pursue non traditional career paths. they are both keenly aware of the work of the women who paved the way. jails women are jim a really found in science and technology and charlotte are found in the realm of the liberal and fine arts. finally, they are both pretty determined women. so if they decide something needs to be done, by goalie, it's going to get done. i asked chill why this project was important and she told me, and i am paraphrasing here. we could not understand how we got where we got on this vendors to the people who came before us and unless we had an understanding of the amount of work and time it took to get there. i think she is right. together, jill and charlotte have created a collection that not only educates but inspirers. i am sure that each of you will go through this book and find a particular favorite entry. i have mine on page 176. it is joyous meniscus in 1974, the owner and founder of this store. i know she didn't found this store for me, but its place in denver and the people it has brought have had a tremendous impact on my life. but she is just one of the many amazing examples in this book, many of whom are women who've largely being forgotten that are now brought back because they are included in this collection. this is not only an important work. it's a labor of love. please join me in welcoming the women who made it possible, jill and charlotte. [applause] [applause] [applause] >> charlotte and i are very pleased to be with you here tonight, because this represents a celebration of five years that we've been working together. you see, and we had a book inside of us just waiting to come out. tonight we get to celebrate its emergence and we thank you for being with us here tonight for this celebration. thank you to the many people who believed in us and thought that we could change the world. thank you, robin, for that kind introduction and your long-standing friendship and support, and the interview in sunday's denver post. sandra, our book agent, is here tonight and sandra has always truly believed in this project. jill who brought us together, staff who helped us get madeleine albright to write the forward. joyce, who helped us be here tonight and carolyn, who helped us procure the images. to acquaint you with the buck, we thought we would answer some of the most frequently asked questions that we get. herstory, a timeline of the women who changed america is a vivid, visual timeline of over 850 women from 1587 to 2007. women who changed our country with their significant accomplishments, most of whom we don't know about, and most of whom we don't learn about and school. we start with the virginia, who was born in what would become the state of north carolina in 1587. we progress through time in this slide of the women who changed america in 1940. note the varied visual images and the range of accomplishments of these women from actors and entertainers to sculptors and writers. and we reached 2007. in that year, harvard university, which was founded in 16 36, names its first female president, and achievement that only took 400 years. [laughs] [laughs] the idea for the book came from my teaching of leadership class. when i mention some historical women who have thought the class should have known, i was flabbergasted that they did not know the women who came before us. women have contributed so much to our lives in so many different fields of endeavor. but do you do? i went looking for a book, a book like herstory that i thought i could use in my classes. i was unable to find one. i was unable to find a timeline format that placed the women into the history of her time. then, my determination went even further because i went to a tea party at a friends house and we played a parlor game where the accomplishments of ten women were on one side and their names were on the other and you had to match the woman to her accomplishments. it was a group of highly educated women, and i was the only one who got all ten names matched correctly. that was even more astounding than what happened next, which was not one woman, other than me, i already said i was a good one, no one knew who margaret sanger was, not one woman. so who is margaret sanger, some of you might be saying. margaret saying or was an early advocate of a woman's right to control her own body. [applause] as early as 1916, she opened birth control clinic and laid the foundation for planned parenthood. can you imagine doing that in 1916? there are about three things that are really important for women in 2008 to have the lives that we have today. the first is the right to vote. the second is the right to own property. the third is the right to control our own bodies. i believe it's very important for all of us to know who margaret sanger is, as well as many other forgotten and invisible women throughout united states history. i had gathered the names of many women and put them in a timeline format. the first timeline was an excel spreadsheets scotch taped together, 100 pages or more. when jill and i met in 2003, i had about 300 women on my timeline. by the time i had met charlotte, i too had collected the names and accomplishments of many historical women in various fields of endeavor throughout u.s. history. my odyssey began in 1987 with an essay contest. my colleague attended a society of women engineers national convention in kansas city and came back with the idea for sponsoring an essay contest. we ended up doing it for sixth graders throughout colorado and wyoming. i said to alexis, that's really a wonderful idea. who are they? like possibly many of you in this room, certainly many of the groups that i speak to who are potentially not as highly educated and informed, a new one historical woman in engineering and science at that time and it was madam marie keurig. so we needed to start researching historical women and engineering and science, because one of the things i learned, and i know this will surprise you, is that in order to judge the essays, we had to be sure these six graders were telling us the truth. [laughs] [laughs] because they ally. [laughs] if you were going to award prizes and give books to schools, it better not be that someone is married to an astronaut and has two lovely daughters. one essay actually said that. i didn't make that up. our research and covered many women throughout u.s. history, including a woman who i now characterize as my catalyst in this process, admiral grace murray hopper. she developed the first computer compiler, the first english based computer language, and found a computer bug. she liked to believe she had coined the term computer bug. it was actually a mauve that was stuck in the relays of the computer at harvard where she was calculating trajectory to fire missiles. she removed the mauve with tweezers and it got added to the logbook. that's not why it's impressive to me. i am proud of my successful nomination of admiral hopper for the medal of technology, which is the u.s. equivalent of the nobel prize. i received that metal from the first president bush for admiral hopper in the white house rose garden, because she was unable to attend the ceremony. then i nominated her to the national women's hall of fame. the family asked me to receive that medallion for her as well. then when the destroyer was launched at the iron works in january of 96, the family asked me to be there as well. i've subsequently nominated a number of other women to the hall of fame, including dr. virginia. if you've had a baby since 1952, there is a -- five minutes after birth called the score. that is a woman, virginia. i found many other women in my field, in many fields of endeavor, through my research. in 2002, i spoke on a women and technology panel when she was running for -- came up after i spoke and said i really would like to get to know you better. i put her off for a while and finally had lunch with her. and she said you must meet my friend charlotte. i called charlotte in early 2003, and i'm going to tell the story anyway. when i called charlotte she said i'm sorry, i'm going to london. you must call me when i get back. [laughs] [laughs] i did. we had lunch. and at the end of that first lunch, charlotte said to me, i want to write a book with you. and we were going to have our first work session in march of 2003. does anybody remember march, 19th, march 21st, three feet of snow at my house and centennial, seven feet of snow and charlotte's house and evergreen, so we actually started working on the book in april of 2003. you've heard that charlotte's background is in speech and communications. she had no idea who many of the scientific and technical women were, including kurt trudeau leon, go true to leon want a nobel prize. and physiology and medicine in 1988 for the development of a childhood leukemia. >> i was just amazed that joe had never heard of is adored duncan. is adored duncan was a well-known dancer who was unfortunately more remembered now for her death than her life because she strangled with a long scarf while she was in her car. but chills research had not focused on the categories of women which with which i was familiar. actors, writers, dancers, journalists, photographers and authors. but knowledge was so complimentary to one another, it really enhanced our partnership and it made our ability to write this book so much richer because we came from those two different places. so in our very first meeting, serious meeting of writing a book, we decided that we would really research all the women to identify as many women as we could that fit a very specific criteria that we rode up. so we could include people in the book. we've mentioned, there are about 850, there are actually 866 but that's out of about 6000 women who we looked at. we reviewed over 200 books on women in u.s. history. and many were books with a specific names emphasis on a kind of woman. for example, great african american women. 100 notable jewish women. women of the west. famous women photographers. women in radio and television. the ladies home journal pick of the last hundred years. fortunately, we both have very significant libraries containing these books and during the course of our work together, we each talk many other folks in this journey. and as we told people about the book project that we were writing, many people provided ideas to us, recommendations, one alerted us for example to -- just after she was inducted the first woman to be inducted into the baseball hall of fame. another thought for the inclusion of victoria would hall, the first woman to run for president. they're still telling us about people and we're collecting names right now for a second addition. we gathered names from newspapers, from articles, from magazines, from obituaries, from research that we did on the internet. we kept our eyes and ears open and look for possible women to include everywhere that we could. >> we mentioned that we developed the criteria for selecting the women as early as our first meeting in april of 2003. we wanted the book to provide educational information and for the large majority of the women to be role models. for people who read the book, to be able to find women like me in leafing through its pages. and so, we did have rules that we developed. we included many women who wear the first to accomplish something. this particular example is mary keys, who was the first woman to receive a u.s. patent in her own name. in 1809, because up to that point in time, patents could only be issued in the names of men. so an 1809, she would receive the patent for a device that we saw was silk or thread. we included women who were outstanding in their particular areas of accomplishments. this is maria who was a very famous native american ballerina. we wanted women who could provide a significant educational moments. this is actually the patent. the 1870 patent for margaret invention of the square bottomed paper bag. what we would call, a grocery sack. 1870. women who contributed significantly in other ways to the quality of life that we have today, in 1935, electrical engineer, and naval mcferrin rockwell was the only woman actively involved in designing and installing the power generating machinery at the hoover dam. we chose deliberately not to compare one woman's accomplishments versus another. after all, susan b anthony fought for most of her life for a woman's right to vote. speedskater, bonnie blair, won gold medals in three straight olympic games and was the first american woman to win five gold medals in the history of the olympics. while it is true that bonnie blair worked for many years to hone her craft, she did not have to spend years convincing people of her cause to raise money for that cause or to be arrested in jailed for voting and following that cause. we fully believe that it is impossible to weigh one woman and her in complements against any other. and ultimately, we came to the understanding that it is the very diversity of achievement that is critically important to identifying the breadth and depth of women's contributions to u.s. history. >> you may wonder -- >> all rules would have precluded the selection of catherine graham. four we had a great that women's accomplishments should not be dependent on their husbands or their fathers, if that is how they obtained their money or how they advanced into political office or how they achieved their position. catherine graham's father purchase the washington post and her husband ultimately became the publisher upon his death, she became heavily involved in the day-to-day operations of the newspaper. we include her because it was her decision to publish the pentagon papers and then to break the watergate story. >> you may wonder how we got from my paper timeline to our book. well, i used to take that scotch tape together type in line to many venues around denver as i talk classes for the women's vision leadership institute and one occasion, i was presenting before the women's vision board, john miller was there, senior vp of sea h. -- and she looked around the room at those scotch tape pieces of paper and she was shaking her head and she said, charlotte tiny, computers have come a long way. we really can do better than this. and they did. chp 2 am hill, who also deserves our heartfelt thanks converted our vision into a beautiful visual display. and we show that display and quite a number of places. because we had that display in hand, we were able to attract interest from the woman who became our book agent, sandra. and this beautiful vision display enabled her to sell the book to harper collins. so always thank you see aged 2 am hill. our editor at harper collins had very specific ideas about how the information in the book should be presented and in fact, she insisted that we use a specific graphic designer from harper collins. who had amazing vision, and developed what became the look and feel of her story. >> many people ask us when they initially see the book, where are the people like me? for the photographer who asked, there is dorothea lang and others. her african american individuals, of course madam c.j. walker is in the book as our many of the other women that they would expect to see. i travel quite frequently and i'm sure you can imagine that i talked to all of my colleagues about the book. they always ask me about the women like them. i've had discussions about all the golfers in the book, i've had discussions about all of the native americans in the book. i've had discussions about all the people from oklahoma in the book. and then i've had a discussion about, well, who are the women that are poor filed in the year of my birth? the year that person was born? we are very proud of the inclusiveness of the women we have chosen to present in our book. and then there are other questions about specific women. some people ask about athletes from their support of interest. others ask about women of their ethnicity or their profession. we know that they are not all here, you've heard charlotte say we look at thousands before we chose the ones to include but over 850 are. >> we believe that our inclusiveness of women of all ethnicities and all fields of endeavor will lead to greater knowledge about these women and their accomplishments and we hope, like the philosophy expressed by margaret. that we will contribute in some small way to a richer culture. >> so, for all those women whose stories we have not included and the girls whose stories are yet to come, we truly dedicate this effort. we welcome you to visit our website, to email us with your thoughts as well as the names of women who you think should be in the next edition and we're going to take just a few questions and then we will be happy to sign your books. again, we are so happy that all of you are here with us tonight to celebrate the publication of her story. yes, robin. >> of the stories that you went through, which stories surprised you most? why was the most unexpected thing you came across? >> i'll go first. elijah lucas is in 1744, when she was a teenager, 14 years old, she developed a method to extract indigo dye and cultivate die in what's now south carolina. that indigo supported the economy of the carolinas for 30 years and then she married mr. -- whose name i can remember. i really can't. and of her children, one of her sons actually signed the united states constitution and another one of her sons became the governor of south carolina. so it's very obvious that she was a strong, capable woman and that she raised strong, capable sons. >> i think for me, i was most astounded when i learned that in 1800, the united states had the highest birth rate per woman in the world. and wasn't india, it wasn't china, it wasn't any emerging country but the united states. seven point oh four babies per woman. and that absolutely astounded me because i thought, goodness! how did they do anything else? other questions? >> we'll wait for the boom. >> if you could give one piece of advice to american women today, but would it be? >> did everyone hear that question? if you could give one piece of advice to american women today, what would that be? i would say follow your dream. follow your passion. stand up, be counted. we have a great opportunity now to do so many things that the women before us couldn't even dream about. you know, at the time, in 1848, when the women got together to try to begin to get the vote, women were not allowed to speak and public. think about that. that wasn't that long ago. 1848! and i was going to echo many of the things that charlotte said but i would also say that it's so important to be persistent. we lose the side of the fact that things do not happen overnight. they do not happen immediately. they do not usually happen the first time. sandra, as much as we love her was not the book agent that we approached. we had quite a number of rejections before, she agreed to rip represent us. if you have something that you believe in, then you just have to pursue it and you have to be tenacious and determined. >> looking at the entire history that you've looked at, how do you see the more modern feminist movement of the sixties and seventies in perspective >>? it will start with that one. there are amazing parallels in u.s. history between the civil rights movement and the women's rights movement. it happened in the 1800s after the civil war and took longer for women to get the right to vote. it's also very important for us to acknowledge that there have been a great successes from the women's movement of the 19 sixties and 1970s. there are women who are in a wide range of careers like mechanical and electrical engineers. there are women who are lawyers and business people and finance people in every area. i think we are not finished yet. there's still a lot of challenges to overcome. >> someone can asked me about the remarks and the speech. it was called we ain't done yet. there's been so many women since the second wave of feminism in the sixties who have started businesses, for example, when that simply was not possible before that time. one thing we were talking about was when women started these businesses, and they were all in feminine areas, women who started a lot of cosmetic businesses, women who started food businesses. these were simply the areas they knew about, and yet they made them into gigantic empires. you look at someone like asked a water. she was a great marketer and said three ways to get to your audience, telegraph, telephone, and tell a woman. [laughs] [laughs] >> of the women that are in the book who are living today, do they all know that they are in your book? it seems like such an honor. >> thank you. we also think it's an honor. and no they don't, but some of them know indirectly, because every single image in the book we had to write for permission. in many cases, we also had to pay a fee to use that image. so their agent may know or their executive tricks may know or other people who represent them. but we hope in the coming months to reach out to them. we would like to let them know they are in the book and hear from them personally. >> i know that the book is just out very recently, but i wonder if there are any plans to market the book to schools so that our young people in the schools can have a wealth of information about all these remarkable women. >> thank you, sandra. yes, absolutely. we have had a great book review in book page. that apparently is the document that a lot of librarians use to select their books and the book was deemed quite outstanding. so we sure hope libraries will come to understand that they need this book. i gave a speech a few months ago where a woman talked right away and was so enthusiastic about the book. she then spoken her segment at this conference and she said every person in my audience needs to buy three copies. i was quite astounded unhappy, of course. she said one for themselves, one for a girl or woman in your family, and one to give to their local library. i thought that was fabulous. [applause] [applause] >> the review in book page actually says this book is an addition that's needed and every library, every public library, every personal library, every college library. and sandra, we have a publicist and were on the radio three times last week. we were on tv monday morning on fox and we are doing everything that we can to try and get the word of the book out. we would ask all of you to help us as well. >> the editing process must have been a difficult one for you, so it was the hardest essay for you to part within the editing process? >> we had the idea that we would do these small excerpts for each woman within the body of the book. then, we would do longer studies in an index format. so we were very diligent and worked really hard and i think had over 100 completed for this back story and everyone said are you crazy, the book is already this thick. no one will read all that other stuff. we had to settle with creating a huge bibliography. now, the hope is if you get excited about a particular woman and there is an excerpt about her, you can go to the back and find many other places that you could read more about her. >> in addition, one of the things that happens when you write a book, as we found, is that it's not the same title that you start with. it's not the same concept, necessarily, that you start with. and it's not the same format that you start with. and when the title was changed to herstory, a timeline of the women who changed america, and that word changed is incredibly important in the selection of the women, there were women who had been in our earlier drafts who were deleted from the book because of that particular concept. and i would say that there were some that we probably had some thanks to about, but in the manner of the fact that it had to be a changed america, it was obvious that those particular women didn't need to be in the book anymore. some of them we couldn't actually verify some of the information about, and so those women were removed as well. >> while you are still celebrating this book, you mentioned you are working on a second book. will the criteria be the same? are you looking at women differently? >> we didn't say we were writing a second book. [laughs] [laughs] we said we are collecting names. i have a spreadsheet, of course. i have a spreadsheet that's now four pages long. it's got over 100 names of women who have been suggested to us that need to be in the book. we don't know if all those women would in fact meet our criteria for inclusion, but i will tell you, we are still finding women who are buried and invisible, that are not known to the public at large, like many of these women in the book, and so we want to just collect all of those names. and assuming that this one sells well, and you can all help us on, that we will have an opportunity to do another addition. we can't even imagine what it's going to be at this point in time. that's a lot of the stuff that editors and publishers do. >> good evening. i would like to thank you both for including me in your book. i'm the first woman elected to congress. [applause] [applause] thank you. i always said that the first woman to do everything had no one to proceed her so she had no role model to follow. she had to make her own way. that's the way it was. i was elected in 1916 and found myself in congress in march of 1917 when they called for a vote for a war that was taking place in europe. the first vote was a vote against you are. i understand that women and politics have come quite a long way. but i do want to make one comment if i may addressing the question about second wave feminist. i had the luxury of a long perspective in history. when i was elected to congress, women didn't see themselves as pursuing these kinds of goals to be equal to men. they saw themselves as wanting to step alongside and bring a woman's perspective to the government, to science, to education. so it was not that i would be just like a man. it was a way of saying i will bring this feminine perspective to all of these areas of life, because it's very much needed. it wasn't present. here we have all these women's stories brought together as the woman's perspective. i think the premise moving forward is that it's not about the equality of approach or whatever it is you are going after, it's the fact that there are two ways of seeing everything. a woman's way of saying that should be equal to a man's. [applause] [applause] >> right behind you, matthew. >> i am wondering if you've ever considered a book of women who changed the world from all different countries. [laughs] [laughs] >> no, we have not. [laughs] [laughs] it's really hard to find these stories. it's really hard to make the choices of who isn't, who is out. jill talked about we had so much thanks to about some peoples accomplishments might be perceived as small if you compare them to other peoples accomplishments. the world seems like a really big task. i'm interested in the stories of earlier women. that's what intrigues me, because so many of those stories are lost and it would be great fun to have the opportunity through talking to people around this country to hear about their grandmothers or their great-grandmothers or their cousins and find out more about american women. it's 400 years, give us a break here. [laughs] [laughs] it's a lot for us to put in these books. >> i think we are in a good place then if we can take a moment. we are going to set up for a book signing and we just welcome any of you who want the opportunity to get in autographed book to join us. thank you so much. [applause] [applause] [applause] next, kirstin downie talks about her book, the one behind a new deal, the life and legacy behind frank since perkins. he she was the first female cabinet secretary who served as fdr's labor secretary from 1933 to 1945. in that role, she helped to create a new deal legislation, and cue lubing social security, unemployment insurance and minimum wage. the other spoke about the 19-year-old book festival which the library of congress hosted on the national mall. >> this person was meaningful to me because was the basis on my entire bk