Caroline Bird

Caroline Bird became the youngest member of the Vassar College class of 1935 at the age of 16, but left after her junior year to marry; she later earned a B.A. at the University of Toledo and a M.A. in comparative literature at the University of Wisconsin. Her books include The Invisible Scar (1966), Everything a Women Needs to Know to Get Paid What She’s Worth (1973), Case Against College (1975), The Crowding Syndrome: Learning to Live With Too Much and Too Many (1976), Enterprising Women (1976), What Women Want (1979), The Two-Paycheck Marriage (1979), Second Careers (1992), and Lives of Our Own (1995). Her book The Invisible Scar, about the Great Depression, was named by the American Library Association as one of the 100 most significant books of the year. Caroline's 1978 book, Born Female: the High Cost of Keeping Women Down, grew out of an article on discrimination against women in business that was rejected by The Saturday Evening Post. Years later when Sofia Montenegro, an award-winning Nicaraguan journalist and prominent feminist activist, was asked how she became a revolutionary, she said that she would never forget the book that had changed her life; she was 16 years old when she read Born Female. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first time the term sexism appeared in print was in Bird's speech "On Being Born Female," which was delivered before the Episcopal Church Executive Council in Greenwich, Connecticut. In this speech she said in part: "There is recognition abroad that we are in many ways a sexist country. Sexism is judging people by their sex when sex doesn't matter. Sexism is intended to rhyme with racism. Women are sexists as often as men."

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