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Speaker 1: Hey, this is Bridget and you're listening the stuff mom

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Speaker 1: ever told you. Now today we're talking about gender disparity.

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Speaker 1: I know you're thinking, what else is new? But did

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Speaker 1: you know that gender disparity actually continues even after we

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Speaker 1: die because women can't catch a break even when we're

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Speaker 1: six ft under. It's true. In scholars, Robert Castenbaumb, Beatrice

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Speaker 1: Caston Bomb, and Sarah Peyton were the first to raise

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Speaker 1: the question of gender disparity after death. They hypothesized that

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Speaker 1: the quote dominant male preferring value system of the United

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Speaker 1: States would carry over the threshold from life to death.

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Speaker 1: In order to prove this theory, they looked at newspaper obituaries.

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Speaker 1: The authors of this study used the obituaries as a subtle,

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Speaker 1: unobstrusive way to figure out society's values system. They proposed

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Speaker 1: that men would get a greater public recognition after death

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Speaker 1: than women. They looked at two major newspapers, the New

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Speaker 1: York Times in the Boston Globe, and their findings probably

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Speaker 1: won't surprise you. They found that men received four times

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Speaker 1: as many obituaries as women, and that male obituaries are

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Speaker 1: longer and ten times more likely to be accompanied by

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Speaker 1: a photograph. Ultimately, the research found that readers of these

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Speaker 1: two newspapers were receiving quote systematic, if subtle, confirmation of

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Speaker 1: the greater importance of men. So probably surprising no one,

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Speaker 1: there's a real gender disparity when it comes to obituaries.

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Speaker 1: Amanda Hes actually pointed this out in fourteen writing for Slate,

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Speaker 1: where she pointed out that most of the subject of

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Speaker 1: the New York Times as obituaries achieved their final criteria

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Speaker 1: for inclusion between the ages of sixty and a hundred.

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Speaker 1: That means that they made their marks in society in

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Speaker 1: the nineteen forties to the nineteen sixties, when women were

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Speaker 1: particularly excluded from spheres of politics, journalism, filmmaking, science, technology, literature,

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Speaker 1: and professional athletics that typically earn attention from The Times. Now,

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Speaker 1: that may be true, but we should also take a

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Speaker 1: at the editorial choices that go into who does or

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Speaker 1: doesn't get an obituary, and to do just that, I'm

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Speaker 1: joined by Jessica Bennett. You probably already know that name,

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Speaker 1: but in case you don't, she is an award winning

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Speaker 1: journalist who writes on gender, sexuality, and culture. She was

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Speaker 1: recently named the Gender editor for the New York Times,

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Speaker 1: and she's the first person to ever hold that role. Now,

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Speaker 1: Jessica pretty much wrote the book on sexism. Literally. Her

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Speaker 1: book Feminist Fight Club is a manual for navigating a

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Speaker 1: sexist workplace and is a must read. Jessica, thank you

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Speaker 1: so much for being here today. Thank you for having

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Speaker 1: me so Jessica. I found it really interesting that there

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Speaker 1: is this gender disparity when it comes to obituaries. I

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Speaker 1: was reading this piece by Amanda Haspecken that she wrote

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Speaker 1: for Slate about how sixty six of the most recent

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Speaker 1: obituaries that she found in the New York Times, all

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Speaker 1: of those sixty six, only seven of them were about women.

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Speaker 1: And so I wonder, like, what do you think is

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Speaker 1: going on here when it comes to this disparity? You know,

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Speaker 1: I think that the media for most of history has

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Speaker 1: been created by and for white men primarily. So what

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Speaker 1: we decided to do was we looked back at our

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Speaker 1: obituaries over time, going all the way back to eighteen

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Speaker 1: fifty one, so that's a hundred and sixty seven years,

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Speaker 1: and we calculated the number of had been devoted to women,

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Speaker 1: and what we found was that only about fifteen to

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Speaker 1: over time had been about women, and even in the

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Speaker 1: past couple of years, just one in five. Now, there's

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Speaker 1: no perfect way of determining these numbers. There were certainly

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Speaker 1: some flaws to the methodology, and we couldn't account for race,

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Speaker 1: which was disappointing because I'm sure most of these were

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Speaker 1: also of white people. But what we could take away

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Speaker 1: from that very clearly was that it wasn't good enough.

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Speaker 1: What we wanted to do with the Overlooked project was

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Speaker 1: take a fraction of those and write the obituaries for

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Speaker 1: the women who never got them but arguably should have.

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Speaker 1: And so certainly we're not correcting the problem over a

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Speaker 1: hundred and sixty seven yours, but we are highlighting some

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Speaker 1: of the real glaring omissions. So who were some of

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Speaker 1: those women who were sort of shockingly left out of

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Speaker 1: the New York Times of obituary section. Well, some of

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Speaker 1: them are names that you would recognize, like Sylvia Platt

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Speaker 1: or Charlotte Bronte who wrote Jane Eyre, or id b Wells,

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Speaker 1: the journalist and suffragists who was a leading voice of

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Speaker 1: the anti lynching movement. And you know, it was fascinating

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Speaker 1: to day back into these archives because of some of

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Speaker 1: these cases women like id B Wells Well. For example,

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Speaker 1: her wedding was in fact printed on the front page

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Speaker 1: of the New York Times, and yet when she died,

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Speaker 1: she didn't receive an obituary. Charlotte Bronty, we only discovered

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Speaker 1: this the day that we published. Somebody pointed this out

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Speaker 1: to me. But when her husband's eye said, Charlotte Bronti's

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Speaker 1: husband dies, and yet when she the subject of his

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Speaker 1: obituary actually passed away, she did not receive one. So

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Speaker 1: it was right exactly. And you know, you can you

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Speaker 1: can make the assumption that this wasn't the same editor

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Speaker 1: overseeing the section when her husband died as when she died.

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Speaker 1: But there were these glaring omissions that we wanted to correct.

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Speaker 1: So for folks who might be saying, okay, big deal,

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Speaker 1: So what Sylvia Plath didn't get it right up in

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Speaker 1: the Times, who cares? Why does it actually matter? I

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Speaker 1: think it matters because so many women have traditionally been

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Speaker 1: erased from history, you know, whether it is them achieving

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Speaker 1: accomplishments that men then simply got the credit for, or

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Speaker 1: simply being famous in their own right, but not getting

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Speaker 1: something as simple as an obituary. And they passed away.

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Speaker 1: I think it's indicative of this larger cultural issue. And

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Speaker 1: one of the things that was fascinating was to see

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Speaker 1: not only the big name, famous women who didn't receive obituaries,

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Speaker 1: but women who had accomplished amazing things, who you may

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Speaker 1: not have heard of, but who in their own right

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Speaker 1: deserved obituaries. So, for example, I wrote the obituary for

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Speaker 1: a woman named Emily Warren Roebling, and she, in the

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Speaker 1: eighteen nineties completed the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, which

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Speaker 1: was of course dubbed the Eighth Wonder of the World

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Speaker 1: and was an eleven year, multimillion dollar process. Well, her

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Speaker 1: husband had actually been the chief engineer of that project,

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Speaker 1: but he came down with a mysterious illness, and so

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Speaker 1: she was tasked with going back and forth to the

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Speaker 1: construction site, overseeing all of the paperwork and in her petticoat,

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Speaker 1: which was pretty rare to see on a construction site

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Speaker 1: in the eighteen nineties, essentially overseeing this whole process. And

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Speaker 1: yet nobody really knew about her. I had never heard

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Speaker 1: of her before. And meanwhile, her husband has received multiple biographies. Again,

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Speaker 1: that's that's so shocking, and she clearly lived such an

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Speaker 1: incredible life and did incredible things, things that we you

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Speaker 1: know still I mean, the Brooklyn Bridge still exists. And

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Speaker 1: it's it's so telling to me how we ignore these

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Speaker 1: contributions from women, even when those contributions are very much

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Speaker 1: still part of our our world today, right. I mean,

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Speaker 1: the quote anonymous was a woman, the Virginia Wolf quote. It.

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Speaker 1: I kept thinking about it throughout this process because truly,

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Speaker 1: these women just were often in the background, kind of anonymous,

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Speaker 1: even though they were doing these incredible things, and it

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Speaker 1: was interesting to look back. So as we were pulling

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Speaker 1: all of these numbers back a hundred and sixty seven years,

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Speaker 1: we actually about midway through realized we needed to restart

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Speaker 1: some of our research because we've been coming up with

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Speaker 1: these names. There's no real perfect way of finding out

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Speaker 1: who did not receive an obituary, but who should have.

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Speaker 1: So to some extent, an editor on our Obituaries team,

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Speaker 1: Amy pat Nani, had been collecting names that she had

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Speaker 1: noticed over time, and I, as just someone who loves

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Speaker 1: history and assascinated by women's history, had a list in

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Speaker 1: a notebook somewhere in my house of women's names who

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Speaker 1: sort of didn't get credit. For things, and so I

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Speaker 1: would type these into our Times Machine search engine that

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Speaker 1: looks back at the archives and scroll through trying to

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Speaker 1: find out if these women had received But at some

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Speaker 1: point we realized that, in fact, until the late nineteen seventies,

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Speaker 1: if you were a woman and you died, you would

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Speaker 1: actually be cataloged under your husband's name, so it would

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Speaker 1: be Mrs Husband's name. And so I had to go

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Speaker 1: back through and read you all of this research because

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Speaker 1: I had been searching under the women's names. More with

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Speaker 1: Jessica after this quick break and we're back. So who

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Speaker 1: were some of the women if you can remember, who

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Speaker 1: were on your your notebook list of women who didn't

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Speaker 1: really get a lot of credit but you thought this

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Speaker 1: person probably deserves an obituary because they were awesome. Well IDB.

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Speaker 1: Wells was one that I immediately typed in, just curious

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Speaker 1: if what we had ever done her, and in fact

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Speaker 1: we hadn't. Um you know, some other people who were

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Speaker 1: bigger names that I that I searched were those like

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Speaker 1: Free to Carlo, who did receive an obituary, but in

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Speaker 1: hers in nineteen fifty three when she died, she was

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Speaker 1: referred to in the very first sentence as quote the

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Speaker 1: wife of Diego Rivera and then in the second paragraph

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Speaker 1: as a painter in her own right. So there are

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Speaker 1: other you know, we could do a whole separate project

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Speaker 1: and like rewriting obituaries in a way that was less

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Speaker 1: condescending and patronizing. UM. Susan B. Anthony was another one

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Speaker 1: that I looked up, and she was referred to as

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Speaker 1: having a very pleasant looking face in her obituary. UM.

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Speaker 1: But some of the women that I had on that

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Speaker 1: list were those like Ada Loveless, who had written what

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Speaker 1: is now believed to be the first line of computer code,

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Speaker 1: and yet at the time she didn't really get much

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Speaker 1: credit and people didn't really know who she was. As

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Speaker 1: I started doing research, I found people like Ruth Ellis,

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Speaker 1: who was the first black press owner in Detroit and

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Speaker 1: eventually turned her home into something called the Gay Space,

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Speaker 1: where she essentially created a community space to help LGBT

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Speaker 1: uth at a time when this was pretty uncommon. UM.

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Speaker 1: There was Martha Costan who invented the Maritimes signal flare,

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Speaker 1: which basically revolutionized communication between US Navy vessels. UM. And

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Speaker 1: yet in eighteen sixty nine, when this was patented, she

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Speaker 1: was listed as the administrative of the projects with her

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Speaker 1: husband um and he in fact got credit for the

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Speaker 1: actual invention even though he had been dead for ten

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Speaker 1: years at the time. That's one that will be upcoming. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's so many stories like this. It goes on and

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Speaker 1: on and on, and we we wanted to put out

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Speaker 1: a call when when we initially published the project, allowing

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Speaker 1: people to submit names and tell us who we might

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Speaker 1: have and it's been overwhelming. We've gotten more than submissions,

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Speaker 1: many of which are completely valid and worthy, submissions of

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Speaker 1: women and people of color and other people that we've

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Speaker 1: overlooked who really do deserve credit. Wow. The fact that

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Speaker 1: you've got so many submissions and this project hasn't been

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Speaker 1: alive for very long, what does that make you? What

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Speaker 1: does that tell you about sort of how we are

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Speaker 1: thirsty ing to see our stories told and to see

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Speaker 1: our our legacies memorialized. I mean, the fact that you

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Speaker 1: had this open call to, you know, provide obituaries for

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Speaker 1: people only up for you know, a little while I've

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Speaker 1: already so many people have said do her do her?

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Speaker 1: Or do this person? Do this person? I mean, it

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Speaker 1: just seems to suggest that obituaries are really powerful that

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Speaker 1: we were thirsting to have our stories told in that way. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's interesting because you know, obituaries are not a section

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Speaker 1: I typically flipped to when I'm reading through a newspaper,

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Speaker 1: but at the same time, they're kind of this final

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Speaker 1: testament to a person's life, and they sort of have

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Speaker 1: this way of telling an audience or readership like who

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Speaker 1: was worthy and who wasn't And so in that way,

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Speaker 1: for so many years, it has been a group of

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Speaker 1: editors inside an institution who have made those decisions. And

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Speaker 1: you know, to some extent you could see in the

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Speaker 1: writing of these how society valued or did not value

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Speaker 1: these contributions, but it was also editors making these decisions.

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Speaker 1: And so I do think we're in a moment right

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Speaker 1: now where there's, you know, this sense that we need

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Speaker 1: to do a better job of unearthing stories, of elevating

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Speaker 1: underrepresented voices. And I think that's reflected both in our

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Speaker 1: desire to do better and to do this project, but

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Speaker 1: also in the overwhelming response that we've received, Like, there

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Speaker 1: are a lot of people that have been missed, and

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Speaker 1: luckily our audience is here to tell us that something

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Speaker 1: I found super interesting, um that this long time you're

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Speaker 1: Times obituary editor William McDonald said was that he was

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Speaker 1: basically like, listen, obituaries. We don't cover the present, we

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Speaker 1: cover the past. And when you look at America, you

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Speaker 1: know the people who were sort of making headlines and

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Speaker 1: making history and getting getting their props for it in

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Speaker 1: the you know, forties, fifties, sixties, those people who are

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Speaker 1: men because our society is stuff and women were kept

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Speaker 1: out of careers like politics, law, medicine, you know, um, athleticism.

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Speaker 1: We didn't live in a society where women's contributions to

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Speaker 1: these big fields were adequately examined. And so thus even

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Speaker 1: today obituaries it's one of the reasons why perhaps a

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Speaker 1: skew mail that it's a reflection of a time and

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Speaker 1: society where women were not on equal footing and did

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Speaker 1: not have equal representation for their accomplishments. Yeah, I mean,

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Speaker 1: I think that there's kind of two things happening here.

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Speaker 1: It's like, yes, the fact that you're looking back at

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Speaker 1: the past and that women and people of color have

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Speaker 1: historically had to work three times, four times, five times

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Speaker 1: is hard to achieve the same things and get the

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Speaker 1: same credit. Um. But also newsrooms that were traditionally white

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Speaker 1: and male, making the majority of these decisions. Like, I

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Speaker 1: don't think it's an accident that now that we see

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Speaker 1: more women in newsrooms, there is more attention being paid

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Speaker 1: to some of these issues. So it's interesting to look back.

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Speaker 1: The way that obituaries work is that there's something called advances,

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Speaker 1: and that means that we are writing the obituaries for

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Speaker 1: people who have not yet died, and they all lived

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Speaker 1: down in what's called the morgue um in a sub

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Speaker 1: sub basement of a building next door, where we essentially

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Speaker 1: have these these news clippings that have been written sometimes

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Speaker 1: twenty thirty years ago, telling the stories of people's lives,

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Speaker 1: and so when a person dies, we're resurfacing that and

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Speaker 1: updating it to publish in the present day. But it's

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Speaker 1: interesting to see how sometimes the language reflects the time

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Speaker 1: in which it was originally written, and in some cases

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Speaker 1: we need to do a better job of updating it,

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Speaker 1: like times have changed. I think that's such a good point.

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Speaker 1: It actually takes me back to this conversation. The Times

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Speaker 1: had around an obituary written for this really really badass

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Speaker 1: rocket scientist Yvon Brill, and the obituary mentioned, you know,

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Speaker 1: a lot about her domestic life, how she was a

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Speaker 1: good cook, a good mother, and a lot of folks said, hey,

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Speaker 1: you know, she also had these amazing professional contributions to science.

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Speaker 1: Why isn't that getting as much play? I mean, she

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Speaker 1: was right, and so this this obituary mentioned that she

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Speaker 1: like was really good at cooking stromboli or something like that,

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Speaker 1: and yeah, she made a mean beeft stroke and off

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Speaker 1: I think it was, exactly. And so folks wrote in

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Speaker 1: and said, hey, this is not how you properly eulogize

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Speaker 1: a fucking rocket scientist, and would you do this if

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Speaker 1: they were a man? Right, exactly. I remember that, I

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Speaker 1: remember reading that at the time. I think this is

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Speaker 1: um and I still refer to it as a beef

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Speaker 1: stroke and off gate. But yeah, you know, I mean

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Speaker 1: this is part of my job here, which is that

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Speaker 1: we in some cases need to do a better job

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Speaker 1: of covering gender issues at large, whether that means gender

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Speaker 1: identity or sexuality or women and feminism, but also looking

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Speaker 1: at the way that we think about things like language

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Speaker 1: and tone and photography and by lines and making sure

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Speaker 1: that the representative like, yeah, the first line of an

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Speaker 1: obituary of a rocket scientist who happened to be female,

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Speaker 1: should probably not talk about her cooking unless that was

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Speaker 1: truly an instrumental part of her life, in the same

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Speaker 1: way that the first line of the obituary about FRIEDA.

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Speaker 1: Carlo should probably refer to her as a painter, not

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Speaker 1: the wife of Diego Rivera. Let's take a quick break

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Speaker 1: and we're back, UM. I want to go back to

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Speaker 1: something that you mentioned earlier. Um, for kind of selfish reasons,

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Speaker 1: So you one of the early obituaries in this series

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Speaker 1: as I to B Wells, as you mentioned earlier, who

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Speaker 1: was one of my idols. I I kind of owe

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Speaker 1: my work in media to her. As awful as it

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Speaker 1: is that someone as influential as I to B Wells

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Speaker 1: did not get an obituary. Something that really sticks in

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Speaker 1: my crawl about it is the fact that you know,

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Speaker 1: she pioneered journalism tenants that we still use today, right Like,

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Speaker 1: I think of her as the mother of advocacy journalism

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Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. You know. They media outlets

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Speaker 1: actually dubbed her the Princess of the press, and I

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Speaker 1: just think the fact that The New York Times, a

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Speaker 1: bastion of journalistic integrity, did not feel that she warranted

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Speaker 1: an obituary. I think, like, I can't. I can't almost

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Speaker 1: I can't forgive it. I'm like, she was the you know,

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Speaker 1: such a pioneer of your field, of the field that

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Speaker 1: the industry that y'all are in, and you didn't give

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Speaker 1: her an obituary. I know. It's disappointing, and it's just

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Speaker 1: so it's so weird to read the actual piece about

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Speaker 1: when she was married, which appeared on page one June,

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Speaker 1: and the style of the newspaper was a lot different

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Speaker 1: than it was a lot of short, little articles appearing

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Speaker 1: on pages, all kind of crunched together without any visuals.

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Speaker 1: But at the bottom, in the middle of the page,

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Speaker 1: the headline is Ida b Wells married period, and then

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Speaker 1: there's a dateline of Chicago, and it says miss Ida

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Speaker 1: b Wells, the colored woman who gained international publicity by

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Speaker 1: her anti lynching lectures in England, was married in bessel

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Speaker 1: Church tonight to Ferdinand L. Barnett, a local colored attorney

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Speaker 1: of prominence who is the publisher of the Conservator and

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Speaker 1: president of the Illinois Anti Lynching League. And that's the

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Speaker 1: end of it. That was the whole notice. On so

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Speaker 1: many levels, it's so jarring and just so telling, you know,

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Speaker 1: the use of the word colored, um, the fact that

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Speaker 1: a marriage would be front page news, and then of

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Speaker 1: course the idea that it was newsworthy when a woman

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Speaker 1: of prominence was married to a man, but not when

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Speaker 1: she died. Yeah, that's I think that you just crystallize

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Speaker 1: why that's six in my craws so much with this

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Speaker 1: particular woman in history, that it was big news that

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Speaker 1: this like accomplished woman was was marrying. And when she married,

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Speaker 1: you know, she her husband, they had a kind of

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Speaker 1: non traditional at the time marriage where he stayed at

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Speaker 1: home and she you know, did lectures and this and that,

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Speaker 1: and so that like, oh, big news, you know, accomplished woman,

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Speaker 1: settle down, and when she dies, not a peep. It's

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Speaker 1: just it's something about it just crystallizes why this is

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Speaker 1: so like this glaring disparity. And and really something about

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Speaker 1: that example illustrates to me how all society sees, particularly

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Speaker 1: black women, but women at large, that like, when we marry,

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Speaker 1: it's a front page news, but when we die not

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Speaker 1: a peeple, Right, And that until almost until I was

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Speaker 1: born in the early eighties, those stuff of women would

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Speaker 1: be printed under the husband's name as if they were owned. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I don't think until this project came along, I ever

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Speaker 1: even really thought about what obituaries can tell us about

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Speaker 1: how society sees women. And I think that, honestly, you've

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Speaker 1: kind of taken the rose colored glasses off. I say, oh, gee,

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Speaker 1: when you look at that, the fact that women were

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Speaker 1: printed under men as that they didn't even really exist,

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Speaker 1: I mean, that really says it all, doesn't it totally?

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Speaker 1: I would be remiss to not point out that in

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Speaker 1: the obituary of IDB. Wells has probably my favorite line,

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Speaker 1: maybe the best line ever printed in a newspaper, where

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Speaker 1: it's her grandson talking about her and he says of

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Speaker 1: his grandmother IDB. Wells, she didn't suffer fools, and she

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Speaker 1: saw hools everywhere. That is I don't want to live

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Speaker 1: in a world. I know, I want we made quote

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Speaker 1: graphics out of it um for social media that we

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Speaker 1: should probably pin up all over our cubicles. Yes, And

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Speaker 1: it's like, I don't want to live in a world

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Speaker 1: where that tidbit about such an influential woman didn't go

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Speaker 1: printed in a newspaper, right like that, like the world

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Speaker 1: needed to see that that tidbit about it to b wells.

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Speaker 1: And if not for projects like Overlooked, it would be

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Speaker 1: overlooks like we wouldn't We wouldn't have that to look

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Speaker 1: back on in a paper and say, damn, how to

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Speaker 1: be well with something else? Yeah, exactly. And the nice

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Speaker 1: thing about this project is that it doesn't you know.

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Speaker 1: We launched on International Women's Day. That was on purpose,

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Speaker 1: but the idea was always to continue this so it

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Speaker 1: looks and far beyond and it runs as a regular

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Speaker 1: feature in our obituary section now and will expand to

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Speaker 1: include anyone who is overlooked. So submissions are still open um.

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Speaker 1: People can always tell us who we've missed. Have you

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Speaker 1: gotten any really interesting submissions in the open call for

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Speaker 1: for folks to eulogize? You know, one of the interesting

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Speaker 1: things was that a lot of people nominated their grandmothers.

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Speaker 1: And when somebody first told me that, I was sort

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Speaker 1: of like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm sure I could nominate

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Speaker 1: my grandmother as well. But in fact we actually went

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Speaker 1: through all of these and there were grandmothers submitted who

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Speaker 1: were incredible. So we published a piece yesterday highlighting some

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Speaker 1: of these. And there are people like Dr Anita Figuereiro,

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Speaker 1: who was a female physician in the twentieth century who

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Speaker 1: was born in Costa Rica at a time when the

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Speaker 1: idea of a woman doctor was really far afetched. There

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Speaker 1: was Peggy gene Connor, who sued the governor of Mississippi

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Speaker 1: and other state officials in nineteen five for voting rights

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Speaker 1: to reappointment and finally one she passed away in There

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Speaker 1: was a woman who was the first female chief of

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Speaker 1: Yale University's Health Service Dermatology Clinic in nineteen seventy one

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Speaker 1: and was also a successful author who wrote children's books.

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Speaker 1: Her name was Dr Marguerite Learner, and her husband had

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Speaker 1: in fact received an obituary in the New York Times,

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Speaker 1: and yet she never received the recognition. Wow. There's another woman,

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Speaker 1: Bertha Closter, who was one of the earliest female literary agents.

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Speaker 1: She lived from nineteen o one to nine. So this

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Speaker 1: was a surprise to me that there are so many

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Speaker 1: readers whose grandparents had actually done these amazing things. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and almost as a testament to the way that in

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Speaker 1: our own families we have these living pieces of history

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Speaker 1: who are in our own blood, on our own families,

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Speaker 1: and that we you know, we personally don't want to

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Speaker 1: overlook them. But then I think it's really cool that

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Speaker 1: people are saying, like, no, my grandma was actually this

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Speaker 1: amazing person. She wasn't just my grandma. She accomplished this,

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Speaker 1: accomplished that. Like, I think it really is a testament

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Speaker 1: to how personally we know that women and our families

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Speaker 1: and our bloodlines accomplish amazing things, but that when it

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Speaker 1: comes to society at large, somehow they can go overlooked.

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Speaker 1: And that I think that we don't tend to overlook

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Speaker 1: our moms, our grandmothers, or sisters, all of that, but

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Speaker 1: we're somehow more comfortable with it when society does it.

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Speaker 1: Inn't it does not seem as awful somehow as it

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Speaker 1: would be to be like, oh, my grandmother was not

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Speaker 1: important or not special or not this or not that,

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Speaker 1: Like you would never do that to your grandmother. But

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Speaker 1: then when society does it, it's, you know, it's somehow

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Speaker 1: it more accepted. I've always loved that assignment that I

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Speaker 1: feel like everyone gets at some point when they're in

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Speaker 1: elementary school or midle school, high school, we have to

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Speaker 1: interview a family member and you're like, like, I don't

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Speaker 1: want to interview my mom. I talked her every day.

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Speaker 1: But then you actually sit down and maybe it's a grandparent,

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Speaker 1: or maybe it's a sibling or a cousin, and you

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00:24:54,440 --> 00:24:57,080
Speaker 1: learn all of these things about that person that you

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Speaker 1: realize you didn't actually know. So I always encourage people

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Speaker 1: to do that as an assignment. Um And there's a

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Speaker 1: real loss of recorded history when it comes to women,

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Speaker 1: and so I think telling these stories and collecting oral

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Speaker 1: histories and rewriting obituaries, all of this goes into this

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Speaker 1: larger collection of kind of repopulating the cultural narrative that

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00:25:20,440 --> 00:25:23,159
Speaker 1: for a long time was written by men. I love that,

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00:25:23,200 --> 00:25:24,760
Speaker 1: and this is a perfect time to do it with

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00:25:25,200 --> 00:25:27,240
Speaker 1: you know things like me too. When the Women's March,

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00:25:27,520 --> 00:25:29,640
Speaker 1: I feel like this is the real time for that

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00:25:29,640 --> 00:25:33,680
Speaker 1: that societal and culture shift where we say, hey, women

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00:25:33,680 --> 00:25:37,840
Speaker 1: have been accomplishing things forever. It's time to recognize it.

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00:25:37,840 --> 00:25:40,359
Speaker 1: It's time to put it in obituaries, it's time to

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00:25:40,480 --> 00:25:42,479
Speaker 1: fund it, it's time to put it on TV, it's

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00:25:42,520 --> 00:25:45,000
Speaker 1: how to put it in an office, all of the things.

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00:25:45,080 --> 00:25:47,600
Speaker 1: I think now is the time for like that reckoning

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00:25:47,680 --> 00:25:50,000
Speaker 1: of saying women have always been here and now it's

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Speaker 1: time to pay attention to us better than I could have. Well, Jessica,

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00:25:54,680 --> 00:25:56,440
Speaker 1: where can folks find out more about what you're up to?

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00:25:57,560 --> 00:26:00,359
Speaker 1: So you can check out the full Overlooked tack and

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00:26:00,600 --> 00:26:02,920
Speaker 1: follow along as we continue to publish new ones at

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00:26:02,960 --> 00:26:06,679
Speaker 1: New York Times dot com slash Overlooked. You can also

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00:26:06,800 --> 00:26:10,360
Speaker 1: follow along in our new newsletter, Gender Newsletter. It's called

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00:26:10,480 --> 00:26:14,440
Speaker 1: Gender Letter, very original title, and it's at New York

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00:26:14,440 --> 00:26:18,280
Speaker 1: Times dot com slash Gender Letter. Jessica, thank you so

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Speaker 1: much for being here today. I'm gonna get off of

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Speaker 1: this call and go call my grandmother and ask for

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00:26:23,160 --> 00:26:26,560
Speaker 1: a better life, because, damn it, the women in our

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00:26:26,640 --> 00:26:30,159
Speaker 1: world are amazing and we should be building tributes to

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00:26:30,160 --> 00:26:33,080
Speaker 1: them wherever that we can. I love that. Thank you

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00:26:33,119 --> 00:26:36,480
Speaker 1: so much for having me. Thanks again, well SMOOTHI listeners,

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Speaker 1: Who are some women that you think deserve obituaries? Who

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00:26:39,240 --> 00:26:42,040
Speaker 1: never got them? Did you have an awesome scientist grandmother

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00:26:42,040 --> 00:26:44,760
Speaker 1: and your family? Let us know. You can find us

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00:26:44,760 --> 00:26:47,560
Speaker 1: on Twitter at mom Stuff podcast, on Instagram at stuff

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00:26:47,560 --> 00:26:49,919
Speaker 1: Mo've Never Told You, and as always, we love your

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00:26:49,960 --> 00:27:00,360
Speaker 1: emails at mom staff at how stuff works dot com.

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Speaker 1: Who don't w