Q: In 2014, who became the first woman to chair the Federal Reserve?
A: Janet Yellen. On October 9, 2013, Janett Yellen was officially nominated to replace Ben Bernanke as head of the Federal Reserve and made history as she took office on February 3, 2014 as the first female Chair of the Federal Reserve. Prior to her appointment as Chair, Yellen served as the Vice-chair of the Federal Reserve from 2010.
Q: Who was the first American woman in space?
A: Dr. Sally Ride, who joined NASA in 1978 after answering a newspaper ad seeking applicants for the space program. At 32, Ride became the first American woman in space and the youngest person to go into space at that time. She was preceded in space by two Soviet women. In 2013, Sally Ride was posthumously awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Recently, the current NASA Administrator, Maj. Gen. Charles Frank Bolden, Jr., (USMC-Ret.), wrote a blog post for The Women’s Foundation remarking on the accomplishments and contribution of Sally Ride and the other female astronauts that came after her and how they inspire women and girls to dream big.
Q: Who was the first African American woman to be appointed Secretary of State, and the first woman to be appointed National Security Advisor?
A: Condoleezza Rice, who served as the 66th United States Secretary of State. Rice was the first female African-American secretary of state, as well as the second African American secretary of state (after Colin Powell), and the second female secretary of state (after Madeleine Albright). Rice was President Bush’s National Security Advisor during his first term, making her the first woman to serve in that position.
Q: Who was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction?
A: Edith Wharton won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel “The Age of Innocence.” She was also nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928 and 1930.
Q: Which female Supreme Court Justice was the first Hispanic member of the Supreme Court?
A: Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Justice Sotomayor earned a B.A. from Princeton University and her J.D. from Yale Law School. President Barack Obama nominated her as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court on May 26, 2009, and she assumed this role August 8, 2009, making her the Supreme Court’s first Hispanic justice, and its third female justice.
Q: Who was the first woman of color and the first Asian American woman elected to Congress?
A: Patsy Mink, a third generation Japanese American, represented Hawaii in the U.S. House 12 times. With her election in 1965, Mink became the first woman of color to join the ranks of Congress. In 1972, she became the first Asian American to seek the Democratic nomination for President, running as an anti-war candidate. The Title IX Amendment of the Higher Education Act was named after Mink.
Q: Which female athlete became the first to score more than 7,000 points in the heptathlon and still holds the women’s heptathlon world record?
A: Jackie Joyner-Kersee. Joyner-Kersee set the world record for heptathlon in 1986 and broke her own record three times after that, finally setting the current world record in 1988 that has remained unbroken since. She is a four time Olympian and has six Olympic medals – three gold, one silver, and two bronze. Sports Illustrated voted her the greatest female athlete of the 20th century.
Q: Who is the first female chief of the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia?
A: Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier. Chief Lanier hails from Tuxedo, Maryland in Prince George’s County and is a strong leader and inspiration to many. Lanier left school when she became a mother at the age of 15. She went on to pursue her GED at the University of the District of Columbia and continued her studies there and at Prince George’s Community College. Lanier has both Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in management from Johns Hopkins University and holds a Master of Arts in national security studies from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Lanier became Chief of Police in 2007 and during her tenure has seen a 53 percent reduction in homicides, ending the year of 2012 with a total not seen since 1961.
Q: Who is the longest serving woman in the history of the United States Congress?
A: Maryland’s own, Senator Barbara Mikulski. Senator Mikulski has served in the Senate since 1987, and before that served in the United States House of Representatives from 1977 to 1987. It was her re-election in 2010 that allowed her to surpass one of our earlier Women’s History Month Q&A answers, Margaret Chase Smith, as the longest-serving female senator.
There are a few labels I will wear proudly, and “nerd” is one of them. Tonight I am headed to a local restaurant called Science Club for a Pi Day celebration – an activity that I would say lands pretty high on the list of “10 ways to tell you’re a nerd.” I’m going to this Pi Day celebration to meet up with my fellow high school alumni from the Texas Academy of Math and Science (TAMS) that have found themselves living in the DC region.
TAMS is a residential math and science intensive school that is publicly funded and available to any Texas high school student for their junior and senior years. The program is housed at the University of North Texas, where students complete college coursework taught by university faculty. I hold this program near and dear to my heart, and I consider myself incredibly lucky to have been a part of such a great school.
I see programs like TAMS as a fantastic way to encourage girls to pursue science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) studies. In 2012, women made up just 5.5% of mechanical engineers, 8.8% of electrical engineers, and 13% of civil engineers. The picture is slightly better in chemical engineering and environmental sciences, with women making up 22.3% and 28.9% of those occupations respectively, but still nowhere near equal representation[1]. The need for more women in STEM professions is huge. Women in STEM jobs earn 33% more than those in non-STEM occupations and experience a smaller wage gap relative to men. Programs like TAMS have the opportunity to spark a love for STEM from a young age.
That is not to say that all girls who attend a program like TAMS will choose to pursue engineering or careers as scientists. I am a good example of such a person who chose a different path, but the experience was still invaluable to me. TAMS allowed me and other young girls like me a safe space to proudly proclaim, “I’m a nerd!” and hear it echoed by our peers. I was able to foster a love for math that has pushed me to teach a weekly math class to adult learners pursuing their GED (at Women’s Foundation Grantee Partner Academy of Hope), and more than anything, it has made me a strong advocate for greater access to STEM programs and jobs for girls and women, something I joyfully get to do in my current role with The Women’s Foundation.
Happy Pi Day to all my fellow nerds out there!
[1] U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Women in the Labor Force: A Databook, 2012