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Steel Roses Podcast
Steel Roses is a podcast created for women by women. Social pressures for women are constant. Professionals, stay at home moms, working moms, we are here to tell you that you are not alone! This podcasts primary focus is providing real honest content shedding light on the daily struggles of women while also elevating women's voices.
All women are experiencing similar pressures and hurdles, and yet, no one is talking out in the open. If these topics continue to only exist as whispered conversations then we further permeate a culture of judgement and shame.
Join Jenny weekly as she discusses topics that effect women in a relatable, honest way.
Steel Roses Podcast
Gail Shapiro on Feminism’s Legacy, Financial Empowerment, and Navigating Gender Equality Progress
This episode explores the profound legacy of the women's movement through the eyes of Gail Shapiro, who recounts her experiences at the 1969 Female Liberation Conference and reflects on the importance of choice and financial literacy in women's lives. Listeners gain insight into generational shifts in women's roles and the ongoing struggles for equality while being encouraged to embrace their own power to choose.
• Gail shares her journey in the women's movement
• The significance of the 1969 Female Liberation Conference
• Reflections on the pressure to "do it all" for modern women
• Financial literacy as a key tool for empowerment
• The importance of teaching children money management
• Discussion on generational differences in women's roles
• Gail's novel "To Sisterhood" as a historical narrative
• A call to action for ongoing conversations about women's rights and choices
Check out her book --> To Sisterhood!
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Hello everyone, this is Still Roses podcast. This podcast was created for women, by women, to elevate women's voices. I'm very honored to have this wonderful guest on with us today. Today we have Gail Shapiro with us. She is the author of six non, which pioneered womankind's financial literacy project, named as a daily point of light by President George W Bush and honored at the National Women's Hall of Fame. She also holds a Master of Education from Harvard University and most recently she published her first novel To Sisterhood in July of 2024. Gail, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, jenny. I'm really glad to be here and I want to start by apologizing to you and to your cohort, because we worked very hard for you to have choices. Women of my generation worked hard for you to have choices, but we never expected you to have to do it all, and so many young women have made a choice to do it all to have families and a career and everything else, and that was never our intention. So I'm sorry for how hard you work.
Speaker 1:You know what? I honestly thank you for opening with that. So gail, also on the. So for the listeners um gail's most recent book to his sisterhood, um, is a? Um fictional novel based on um, the women's movement. And it was the. What was it? A women's conference in 1969? Was it the first one?
Speaker 2:started out as the first. It was was called the Female Liberation Conference at Emanuel College in Boston on May 4th 1969. There were other conferences, but that was the first one I knew about in Boston and, yeah, I was a college student. I hitchhiked down from Vermont and it changed my life completely.
Speaker 1:You know, I can only imagine you know before I start asking questions. Yes, why don't you introduce yourself to the listeners? Because I have listeners, just so you know. I have a lot of love for Gail because she's one of the. I've been actually kind of bragging a little bit that I have one of the original feminists like coming in and on the podcast and I'm super excited about it. So, gail, why don't you just let the listeners know a little bit about your story? I would love for them to get to know you a little bit, and then I'll ask some questions.
Speaker 2:Thank you, jenny, and I have to say I'm not one of the original feminists. I'm I'm about 10 years younger. No, I owe a lot to the women who were that much older than me, who organized the conference, who organized some of the events that you read about in the book. So I was just, I was just a spring chicken. I was, I was a teenager starting out, right, so, yeah, so a lot of women came before me and it's to them that I, you know, I owe a lot.
Speaker 2:So I, I was very involved in political activism when I was a young teen the civil rights movement and everything else and then we started finding out about what it meant to be a woman in our culture and we realized there was so much to do and so much to learn, and that's when things started to get exciting. You know, I was curious to know. I don't know if you want this or not, but at the very beginning of the book there is one page that's a nonfiction prologue, which would really set the tone for this discussion. If you'd like me to read it, I can do that.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Okay, so this is not part of the. I mean it is part of the novel, but it's nonfiction, as I said, the prologue says wanted female Fewer than 30% of married women with children work outside the home and women earn 45% less than men for the same jobs. If a woman gets fired for refusing her boss's sexual advances, well tough luck. There are no laws against sexual harassment in the workplace or anywhere else. With rare exceptions, abortion is illegal in the United States. Birth control, unless one is married and has a doctor's prescription, is illegal in Massachusetts.
Speaker 2:Domestic violence does not yet exist as a term or a concept. Wife-beating is a private problem, not a public health issue. A responding police officer is likely to tell the batterer to go take a walk and cool off. Married women cannot obtain credit in their own name. Most leaders of the anti-Vietnam War movement are men. Men can refuse to serve. Women can say yes to boys who say no. The second wave of the women's movement has just begun. A conference at Emanuel College in Boston, sponsored by Bread and Roses and other female liberation activists, will change the way a group of four young women see themselves, live their lives, view society and their place in it, and develop friendships. They will hear about sexism and the oppression experienced by women and what women can do about it. They will learn about self-defense, community organizing, class divisions, the influence of the media and taking back control of their bodies from a male-dominated medical establishment One afternoon, the power of ideas.
Speaker 1:I love that. That was such a nice way. You're right, that was like the perfect way to open the discussion.
Speaker 2:And that's what the book is about, what we learned and what we did about it. So, as for me, that's all you need to know. That's where I started and just been trying dedicating myself to these ideals for a very long time.
Speaker 1:You know, it blows my mind a bit when I hear things like like, for example, I just was reading recently that women were not permitted. You know, if you held a seat as a senator, um, you were not allowed to wear uh pants and that, and that women wearing pants was like a thing that like only came about being okay in the in 1990s. Like it was like in the 90s that it started to become okay and it didn't really like click, like register for me, one of my neighbors, actually still to this day. She has daughters and she will not allow them to wear pants until they get to high school. They have to wear skirts. And I was, I was a little, I was like, oh, I guess that's sweet, like whatever, like I don't do that, I'm like it's cold out, like what are we doing here? But you know, it didn't really occur to me like the connection there, like oh, wait a minute. Like that's from like way back.
Speaker 2:Just to back that up. I don't know about when laws in the Senate changed, but we couldn't wear pants. To high school there was a girl's couldn't wear pants. In fact your skirt had to be longer than your knee and I remember in middle school, junior high, we called it. Then the nurse would come out and she'd say she thought your skirt was too short. She'd say kneel, and you knelt down in the hall and if your skirt didn't touch the floor you were sent home and that was standard.
Speaker 1:And it's interesting because it's still a really hot topic today Like women's wardrobes are, especially in high school. There's consistently a harsher, harsher, more rigorous rules for young women than there are for young men.
Speaker 1:And it's always kind of the argument like doesn't really make a lot of sense. It's like, oh well, you know, we don't want the boys to be distracted from their studies If we see these girls bra straps. It's like are we, are we being serious right now? Like you know, we can't have them control themselves. I also read this thing recently. This it was a woman, a Middle Eastern woman, was basically educating her son because her son was based telling her like you should be veiling your face, you should be covering your whole face. And the um, the woman, um, you know, argued back to her son and said like that's meant, that's put into place to hide women, to um, to, you know, to shroud women, to make them almost less than. And she said she and she's like, and for what? Because men don't want us to be distracting them, or where we shouldn't be putting ourselves out there. And her final statement was it's your eyes that should be shrouded. Like why is it that the whole? You know?
Speaker 2:like it's crazy um, that is so. I don't obviously don't practice failing. I'm not of that face, but I do know some women who appreciate it. They like, they like, they feel, um, protected, and I.
Speaker 1:I know there's two points of view on that, so I can't speak to that personally, but right, Right, yeah, and obviously I can't either, but I had read that too, and I read it at the same time as the pants thing.
Speaker 1:That's why it was like it came through In the prologue, though you actually mentioned a few other points here. So even the issue of birth control and abortion, now that was actually quite not shocking, because I knew that there was a new. Things were illegal. I knew things were more strict, but because of the current state of affairs that we find ourselves in, um, it's frightening to to think about how we had come so far with being able to have the right to govern ourselves and then to then be kind of brought back and it's is to me, on a deep level, not a moral issue but a health issue. And and to know that you know like I mean something as simple as a young woman protecting herself was illegal and we're in danger of it being illegal again. You know, like that's not something that should be taken that lightly, and I feel like either women are not thinking of it in that way or it's being taken almost for granted that it's so readily available.
Speaker 2:That's true, I have respect for women whose religious beliefs prohibit. It's not the way I believe. But I understand and that's fine. If that's what they choose, fine. But the government has no place in telling me or my daughters or my granddaughters what to do with their bodies. To do with our bodies. That's that's between you and your doctor or your religious leader. If that's important to you, your partner and, but mostly, yourself, it's a woman's right to do, to have control over her own body, though it's very yes you, you mentioned that you hitchhiked to the conference.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I am dying to know when you first of all, how did you you hitchhiked to the conference. So you already kind of knew like I want to go and hear this. I feel like this is something I want to hear.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I was with a friend and we went together and hitchhiking was pretty common in those days. It was probably still as dangerous as it now, but we didn't think it was, so it was more common. It was sort of like the 60s equivalent of Uber. You know, it was ride sharing. You saw somebody on the street, you picked them up and you drove them and they chipped in for gas or whatever if they could, and that's what we did, you know. Then it got dangerous. I don't recommend anybody listening there.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, no, today's day and age. No, I would absolutely not. It's funny because my mom has told me stuff like that about when she was growing up and I'm like Ma, you didn't think that that was like a bad idea and she was like it was just so normal.
Speaker 2:Everybody did it. That was ride sharing at the time, anyway. So, yes, I had a friend from college and she and I just heard about she, I think she heard about this conference and said, do you want to go? And I said sure, and we didn't really know anything, we didn't know what it was about. And we just went down and we walked in this room and there was like 500 women in this room and, oh my gosh, what was the energy like when you walked into that? Amazing it was. It was so powerful.
Speaker 2:I mean, the main speaker got up and actually the first couple of chapters talks about the conference and so, talking about these ideas, and women were standing up on their chairs and shouting and singing and it was just, I was just sitting there, absolute agog, and it was like look at all these women, because I'd been involved in anti-war protests before you know, thousand people, and so I grew up near New York, so in Central Park, you know, walking down the street, but this was just like five or six, I can't remember five or 600 women, and the energy was astounding and I thought, wow, look what we can do together, because it had never occurred to me that, you know, like after the revolution we all there was going to be a revolution After the revolution.
Speaker 2:Who is going to be cooking the celebration dinner that night? You know, it wasn't going to be the guys, and it just sort of changed everything the way I thought about that. Most of the leaders of the anti-Vietnam War movement were men and there were some women, and then we started to come forward and, let's say, take matters into our own hands. But it was very, very exciting times.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I imagine it a bit like fireworks going off in your brain.
Speaker 1:You know, because you're here so especially, and you know in conversations that I've had with my mom, because my mom, my mom and I disagree a little bit on this subject Respectfully disagree, but we do and you know I I talk with her occasionally about you know what it was like for her like growing up and and you know she was really raised much more traditionally and she didn't think too far outside the box.
Speaker 1:And then here I come along, her daughter, and it was very it's very interesting Cause like, even like when I was a young girl, I remember she would kind of try to give me these traditional things, like and in my, in my mind, there was a lot that stuck with me and there's a lot of, you know, really home values that that have stuck with me. But I distinctly remember many instances of me just questioning in my head I didn't verbalize it, but in my head I was very young and just in my head like well, that doesn't sound right, like should that be that way, or should people be treated like that, or is that supposed to happen?
Speaker 1:And those little little seedlings eventually, you know, push me towards like questioning it and like, let me look into this. And I remember when I got to I think I was about 20 years old somebody had said to me I made a statement about something. And they were like well, how do you know that? And I was like my parents that's what I, how I was raised Like, they taught me that. And they were like well, did you ever look into it?
Speaker 1:And it didn't really occur to me to like really research and do my own legwork and like figure stuff out for myself until I was about in my early 20s. And I was like well, I guess I never really thought about it. And so I just started at that point looking into other things and other ideas. And that's really where I started to have those blossoms and seeds of like oh, you know, I can, I can really drive this, like, I can drive my life, like I don't have to do things a certain particular way. And I think at its root I had a. I had a discussion with somebody else who's also going to be in the, in the same series as you, um, and she said you know, at its, at its baseline for her. Um, the movement was about equality. You know, it wasn't about tearing men down. It's not about dragging women who decide to stay home. It's not about dragging and making people feel bad if they decide to work. It's about having the choice.
Speaker 2:Right, it's all about choice and, as I said in the beginning, you weren't expected to do it all, but that's not the message that many of your generation got. I know.
Speaker 1:You know it's interesting, listen's, interesting listeners. Gail, the first conversation Gail and I had together, she said that to me. She was like you know, it was never meant, because I think I might have even said like I'm going crazy, like I'm because of all the things I'm doing, and she's like you know, you weren't really supposed to be doing all that well, you could if you wanted to, but you didn't have to.
Speaker 2:That was the thing. And I think we had a different message that we you know, we many women I know worked and had families and stuff, but we didn't think we had to do it all. We could stay home or we could go to work or we could do both, whatever we wanted eye-opening experience and, um, we just kept our eyes open and going forward. And still we're going forward.
Speaker 1:I hope we're going backwards a little now but we'll go forward again slash, but I think we'll always go forward at some point because there's enough.
Speaker 1:There's an and that's the exciting thing and that's the. The wonderful thing about this podcast is that I get to talk with people guests like you, yourself and the other guests that are in throughout the seasons and having the exchange of ideas is a big deal. Being able to even talk with you and put this on air, this is a big deal because it's really spreading the message of, like you have a choice. You don't have to bury yourself in work and be working, you know, 70 hours a week but then also taking care of your kids and also the household and all that stuff. You don't have to do that Like there there is of your kids and also the household and all that stuff. You don't have to do that Like there is.
Speaker 1:It's meant to be a choice and it's meant to be something that like it's okay if you choose to be a working mom and it's okay if you want to be a stay-at-home mom, but like the choice is there. One of the bigger things that the last time my mom and I debated about this that I was like kind of hanging my hat on, was mom. Had this woman's movement not happened um, I would have never been able to purchase my home. That's right.
Speaker 2:That's right you, could you?
Speaker 1:know like I was and I said to her I was like it's as simple as that having a bank account in my name without having to have anyone overseeing me yeah, that that was because everybody else I believe.
Speaker 2:I may be wrong, you may look this up, but I believe you, a married woman, couldn't get credit in her own name till 1974. That sounds right. Yeah, that's about. So that was a big deal. You know, you didn't have someone to sign for you. You didn't have someone to oversee you. You were an independent agent, even if you were in a partnership. Now, women who are in a partnership with a man and obviously not all women are still do twice as much housework per week as their male partner. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1:Even it's interesting, mike.
Speaker 2:If they're working full time outside the home.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I actually was just having a fit, like maybe like 15 minutes before we were recording, because I was like I have to get on my podcast. And my husband was like, did you do this yet? And I was like, oh my God, I have to get on my podcast. I guess and it's interesting because the roles do even for the couples that I know that were really, really trying to do a split, and the husbands were on board and like, yeah, we're going to do a 50-50 split. But even in those instances, majority of the caretaking does fall traditionally to the mother and with that, you know, there are challenges and it kind of just bubbles up in that way. And you know, I know that it's almost like it's like a trade off. You know, like some days I'm super stressed out and other days I'm not and everything. So I think that all women go through that. But it's again boils down to that like well, we're, we're picking it, kind of thing.
Speaker 2:It's again boils down to that like well, we're, we're picking it kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Well, you know I'm I'm by trade. When I'm not writing, I'm a professional organizer. And when I teach clients, you know especially people who have children at home, older children at home who don't really get. You know that it's not just enough to put your socks in the hamper, that they have to actually contribute to the upkeep of the household.
Speaker 2:I have a list that says you know what it takes to run a household, and it's everything from earning the money to run the household to the chores you would think about the doing the dishes and so forth to things like financial management, yard care and taking care of the car, and there's a lot of things that sort of traditionally have fallen along gender lines, but not so much as much as it used to be. You know there are plenty of women who know how to do things that used to be in the domain of men and the other way around. So I think the point that we were trying to do is that we all just need choices. That's the message. We all need to have choices and live our lives the way we choose to have them, not the way someone tells us we should live them.
Speaker 1:Right, exactly, right, exactly. And you know like, that's where for a really long time I failed, in the sense that I was trying to just carry everything on my own shoulders.
Speaker 1:And I had gotten the poor messaging that I have to do it all, and part of that is in part because of me in my head, you know, thinking like I can't rely on anyone, you know. So that was like part of my own like psyche kind of situation. But at the root of it it was like no, I have to do everything myself. I'm supposed to be taking care of everybody, and I did that for many years and in the it was like the first four years or so of my kids' lives, I felt like I had to do everything. I couldn't have anyone help me. If somebody helped me, that meant I wasn't being a good mom and I think a lot of women operate under that assumption, like they have to do it all.
Speaker 1:And I've been saying a lot recently like that was such a huge mistake for me, it was such a huge failing on my part, because I say to my husband all the time and we both talk about it quite a bit that I'm like it feels like it was such a blur. I was in such a rush for the kids to grow up because I was so stressed out, because the kids were so little and I had three babies at the same time, and it was like this whole big thing that I missed stuff. And you know, now I am being much more mindful for asking for help, Just gal, I'm doing much better. I'm being much more mindful of asking for help and also, you know, taking the time to enjoy life. I think a lot of us also get hung up on living to work as opposed to working to live.
Speaker 2:I hear you and you know what you're just saying, Jenny, resonates with me, because for women who have male partners, it does them a disservice too. Because I'm an organizer, I work with a lot of couples and I've seen women say you didn't load the dishwasher correctly or you didn't change the diapers the right way. And that's not giving men agency, or whoever their partner is, whether it's a woman, a man, it doesn't matter, it's like somebody. If one person thinks they're better or they're more, you know, naturally adept at doing this stuff, it doesn't give the other partner room to grow. So not fair either way.
Speaker 1:Well, you know what the other part of that, too, is Cause I also have had that problem was that I would my head would be like, oh my gosh. Well, for example, like I'm trying to teach the kids to put their laundry away, like they're big enough now. Everything's hung up, so it's super easy and for it it's still in the beginning and it irks me a little bit still. But I'm like, if they hang, hang it up, you know, kind of all discombobulated or whatever, sloppily, I would get all frustrated. I'm like, oh my God, I got to redo it anyway. Like what's the point of asking for help? But the whole point is they're learning to do it now, even when it's your partner. Okay, they're going to do it a different way, it's still going to get cleaned, you know. So let it go. Like those are the little like things that I'm like just let it go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you have to, otherwise you'll make yourself crazy. You know you can't do. You can't do it all. You'll blow a, blow a gasket.
Speaker 1:I feel like I did in like 2020. I think I blew my final gasket.
Speaker 2:But coming back to just even things about you know you asked before about the financial literacy project what we did at the Women's Center. We had a little town outside of Boston, where I live, and it was a resource center, and this was before the Internet. Well, I mean, the Internet existed but most people didn't use it. So we had resources on index cards, cell cabinets. And women come and say where can I find a plumber, where can I do this, where can I do that? But most of the questions had to do with money, specifically women's lack of knowledge about money. So I said, okay, we've got a situation here. So I said, okay, we've got a situation here. So I literally took six women who I would consider financial professionals a banker, a stockbroker, a mortgage lender I'm trying to remember who he did an estate attorney, and there's one other I can't remember and six women who I called sort of the consumers, and I threw them all in a room for a day. I said, okay, come up with a curriculum. What do you want to teach, what do you want to learn? And boom, the Financial Literacy Project was born with my friend I have to give her credit Anne Big Smith did this with me and she and I came up with this class, and it was a six-week class just on basic money management, and women came from all walks of life, all ages. We had 20 year olds in the class, we had 80 somethings who had never written a check, and we had one young woman. She said I really never wrote a check. My husband passed away, my son wants to take over the money, I want to learn how to do this. And one of the young women whipped out. It was when everybody wrote checks. There was no Venmo or anything you know. And she said look, you just write this here, you write your name here, you sign it here. And she went wow, I know how to do this.
Speaker 2:So the premise of the Financial Literacy Project is we all have something to teach as well as to learn, and a lot of people ask me why is this class just for women? Men need to know this too. And my soundbite was always this I know plenty of people, both men and women, who cannot or will not balance the checkbook, but I have never, never, heard a man giggle about it. And the message is we need to take ourselves seriously when it comes to money, because even if we live with a partner, male or female, who we love and trust. That doesn't mean he or she is good with money, and so we need to know how to do it ourselves. So that's what I've been doing. I actually gave a lecture a couple of weeks ago through an organization in New York called Derote, and 126 people came. It was online, and it just shows me that 30 years later, there's still a huge need for this information.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is huge, by the way, and I can actually add to that too, because I observed, you know, my parents, my parents are divorced and when they were married, my dad managed all the finances and my mom just she didn't, she just didn't get involved. And then they divorced. She didn't, she just didn't get involved. And then they divorced and and I remember the fallout vividly because I was about 15 and I remember observing that and thinking to myself, like you know, how could you not have asked, or how could you have let this get so far that you have no idea what to do here now? Because once, once he left, like that was, that was it. She was on her own, she had to get a job, she was a stay at home mom. So it was, it was, it was a big disaster and that was actually. That was a huge catalyst in pushing me to be as hands-on as I am. And I remember I was.
Speaker 1:I had never, I had never actually relayed that story specifically to my husband. And the one day he and I were just like talking about stuff, and, you know, talking about our families, and I said something about this and he was like, oh, that makes so much sense and I was like what he was like? Because you are always wanting to control everything, he's like. As soon as we started dating you were like, oh yeah, I'll handle the monies. Or when we moved down together, like I'll handle the finances, I'll do this, I'll do that. And I was like I don't even really like it. It gives me anxiety, but to not do it is worse for me.
Speaker 2:But you know good that you did. I, but you know good that you did. I didn't mean to interrupt, go ahead, oh no.
Speaker 1:Well, I was going to say, but on the flip side of it, there's a lot of women who really don't know what to do with finances and how to manage it, so your course is actually still incredibly important today, and I work with individuals to do that too, and I'm not a.
Speaker 2:I just I don't want to misrepresent I'm not a financial professional. I don't tell them, like, where to invest their money. I tell them how to organize it, how to make a budget, how to cashflow projection, how to do the net worth statement. But one of the things I was going to point out is that 90% of women who currently are supported by someone else will at some point be handling finances on their own 90% and so it behooves us not to stick our head in the sand. You know there's a lot of reasons women don't want to think about money or deal with money. I mean, it's boring, it's tedious, like it's not fun, or we have so many other things to do. It's just way down there on the list. But the message I give in my classes is the only person you can count on is you Always, always and so and so. So anyway, yes, I was a single mother for 15 years, so I know I had to learn.
Speaker 1:Well, there's also like the life expectancy, I think women are, I think, expected to live longer, like, whatever the numbers are, I think women do outlive men 3.2, something right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know that it's there because I've heard that before. So it makes sense that we should learn about this and know about it. And, you know, even if you are like, if you're not, don't have an income coming in, you should still be aware of, like, where are things going. Because I actually think about this quite a bit too. I'm like as much as I handle all the, all the ins and outs of everything that happens here in my home, I actually always reflect on, like well, what happens if something happens to me? What's going to happen?
Speaker 1:always reflect on like well what happens if something happens to me, what's gonna happen, and, like my organization and me, making sure everything is like really buttoned up and clear is incredibly important and it's almost not to call on it, say anybody's stupid. But it's almost like you're really playing russian roulette with your life if you don't have a good understanding of where what's happening with things, because right you're. If you don't have a good understanding of where what's happening with things, because right you're. If you're significant other passes and you're left there. I mean think decisions have to be made super quick and you know, do you know where the life insurance policies are? Do you know? You know the banking information? Do you know where all the bills are held? Where are, what passwords are to the?
Speaker 2:accounts like passwords, and you can't uh, you can't even close your partner's linkedin account without sending it to get no password. I mean, it's really hard. So, yeah, so, but the point is not to be negative about it, it's to really and to teach children, um, and to teach children how to, how to save, how to spend, how to share those three things you know, and just anytime the money comes in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do the kids, my kid I have three kids and they're the twins are seven and my son is eight and they get allowances. They do chores and I'll give them an allowance. So they have their little savings that they're, like you know, squirreling away and I will let them, like you know, if they decide they want to spend it, I'm like, okay, yeah, you can spend your money, but, like you know, you're going to have to earn more or what you know like, and I let them do that exchange. They get very excited about it to be able to like buy something for themselves. Then I, you know, encourage like they'll do more tours and earn more money.
Speaker 1:And then I also encourage them to I'm like, you know, well, think about this now like, do you really want to spend your money on this or would you like to wait? Because if you wait, you know, and I make them now think through those steps, because I never had that kind of a education or thought growing up. When I started working I was like, oh, it's just money, spend, spend, spend. I was like quite the shopaholic. So I'm trying very hard to like change that routine with my kids, because it does start young in my and they hear everything you say and so, and so it goes.
Speaker 2:So I wanted to ask you when you told me you read the book and I don't want to give any spoilers here to the readers because I really I don't want to do that but there were some, some things in the book that you said really surprised you, events or things that happened. You mean, can you tell me what those were?
Speaker 1:because I you told me one or two and I forgot yeah, this is not a spoiler because this is going to be so broad that it won't be a spoiler which, by the way, listeners, the book is called to sisterhood. I have to tell you, I don't have a lot of time to read and I read this book every single day and I like literally carved time out just to read the book because I became so invested in the characters that I, when I was done well, I was emailing Gail throughout, being like I love the book, oh my gosh. And I was like emailing her my comments randomly, which, gail, you probably thought I was like going nuts. It was great. It was great.
Speaker 1:I was, I was enthralled by the book. I literally I sent copies out to people but I got so invested. So I actually very strongly, highly recommend this book because it is. It is very interesting to read because it gives you a really good baseline for what actually happened and what life was like. So, um, marriages were one of the big things that shocked me in the book, and the ages of people when they got married and that nobody batted an eyelash at that was kind of shocking.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they were. We were very young. A lot of us got married very young and didn't think anything of it. I mean, a lot of women got married out of high school not in my, not in my circle but definitely by the time you were finished with college, you were engaged, you got married. Definitely by the time you were finished with college, you were engaged, you got married. Like you know that some women waited longer, but a lot of women did not. So, yeah, that was. It was not uncommon to be married by 19 or 20 or 21.
Speaker 1:Well, and it was. It was. It shocked me and I remember when I was growing up in my family, everyone used to always say like, oh, no, wait, you know, go to college, start working. Like wait. They were like really pushy about that, like wait it out. And I remember when I started working professionally, I had a couple of women that I was working with that they didn't get married until they were in their like early 30s, late 30s, like you know like, and they didn't have kids until they were like mid 30s. It was everything was like much, much later. And then, on the flip side of it, every single person I was friends with got married between the ages of like 22 and 25. And I was like the last man standing.
Speaker 2:I was like, so interesting about that is just and it's about the women's movement is my sister is four years younger than I and obviously we grew up in the same house, we had the parents, we got the same messages, we went to the same schools and I heard because I was born earlier, um, you grow up, you get married and you go to college. You get married, you raise your kids and then, when your kids are back in school, maybe you'll have a job. You know just something with yourself, my sister, my sister heard you grow up, you go to college, you have a career and then you get kids.
Speaker 2:And she was only four years younger. And what was different? The women's movement, yeah, came right in between us. She did, and that's exactly the patterns we did. I mean, she, I had my first at 22. I'd been half years and she had her first. I can't remember late 30s, I can't remember. But oh, really it was a different. But we had the same parents in the spring and go figure parents in the spring and go figure, you know.
Speaker 1:so that's really interesting, actually, because it speaks a lot to the massive impact of society, yeah, and what is happening in the world that is going to influence the next generation and generations to come. We're very, we're very open and vocal in my house. So we, if you, gail, if you ever have the pleasure of talking to my children, they, they're very, you'd probably get a kick out of them. They're very articulate and they will sit and talk with you and debate with you. My son, I'm certain, is going to be an attorney because of the way, like it's just, he will debate you until your last breath and then he'll get what he wants. Like it's the craziest thing to observe. He's heard me on a lot of conference calls.
Speaker 1:I think that might be where it's coming from, um, but we're, we're very, we're very particular about like, talking to the kids. We don't baby or coddle them. So they will come to you and discuss like topics that are, you know not, you know, inappropriate topics, but older kids or, you know, young people topics, because to me, I'm like, society is feeding these messages to people and you know our current society. I don't agree with a lot of things that are being put out. So I'm like, if I need, if you want your, your children, to have certain specific messaging, or you want to make sure that you're helping to not control but to guide the messaging, yeah, having that open dialogue to me is like super important, I think so too, you know.
Speaker 2:I just you were just talking to me. My sister, you know, grew up in the same family, but the women's movement came and intervened. If you asked her she might say well, I looked at my older sister and I didn't want to do what she did, so I was going to. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So, honestly, that might be her view. Honestly, it could be, though, and you know well. It's interesting because, like my mom was a stay-at-home mom, I watched the marriage fall apart. I watched what happened to her in that whole, what you know, what she went through, and that was a huge deal to me to be like. I'm going to have a job and I'm going to have a career and I also want a family, though, so I'm going to make sure and, as you said, in my head I was like I'm going to do all of it, because I want to do all of it, and I might've lost all my hair at one point, and I might. I might have been incredibly unhealthy, but, but I survived and I've come out.
Speaker 1:The other side there was, as you said, we don't want to give any spoilers for the book, Cause I really I'm listeners. If, especially with the hot, like what went more, even like a summer beach read like I'm telling you this book will grab you and it's going to hold you. And I literally begged. As soon as I said I finished, I said to Gail I was like when? When's the next one coming? Because I need to know what's going on with these ladies, I going on with these ladies.
Speaker 2:I was working on it this November during National Novel Writing Month, which is how I started this one. Do you know about that NaNoWriMo? No, you mentioned it when we chatted last time. It's National Novel Writing Month. It's a non-profit organization, the month of November and you have a challenge with people from all over the world and you write a 50-second word novel in 1,667 words a day and you can chart your progress and you can speak to other people and it's really good when you're done. I mean that's not, but you get a really good draft and that's why I wrote the NaNoWriMo book a long time ago. So yeah, so yeah, I'm right on the sequel now because I had to.
Speaker 2:Well, actually, you asked to tell the story. I actually started writing this book. I can't remember. Somebody said how long did it take you to write this book? And I have to say 55 years because I had to live all these stories first before I started. But really I've been working on this sort of every November for a long time. Anyway, I had 600 pages and I really intended for this book to cover these four women's lives over 40 years and their complex friendship and what happens to them. I had 600 pages, which is 50% longer than a typical novel.
Speaker 2:And I was in 1972 because I started in 69. There was so much happening. So somebody suggested to me why don't you stop here and write a sequel or two? And I said so it ends. It ends with a lot of I mean it ends with people. You know where they're going next, but clearly there's a lot of unfinished business.
Speaker 1:So that's why I was dying. When I finished it, I almost and I have to tell you I actually almost I delayed like finishing it a little bit, just because I was like, oh no, I'm not going to put my friends with me anymore.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you. You know I'm a big reader and that is the best compliment you can give.
Speaker 1:Oh, it was it was just it was so well done and I was like gushing to everybody about it because I was so excited about it. So the marriage, the, the, the young, young marriages, kind of that. That shocked me a bit. And also, you know what I thought was very interesting how fluid everybody just kind of kind of picked up and went places. Oh yeah, that got me, because I remember like I must be like such a stick in the mud Gail because I graduated from college and I was like all right, job go, and that was it. Like that was it. I didn't do anything else and I was reading this book and I'm like, wow, these people were like really involved in stuff and really doing some cool things and they're traveling all over the place and oh for the summer.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna hop with this person to here and this and that, and I'm like I didn't do any of that, I just got a job like this is boring, don't forget this.
Speaker 2:The women in this book will, except for one of the characters, Diane, who grew up in a in a blue collar, you know. She worked in a factory. The others were really grew up in families of privilege. They could have those options. They could go here and there and do what they want to do. They weren't all wealthy, but they were definitely had options that a person in a working class family did not have. And at the time, don't forget, a student standby ticket from Boston to California was $79. Oh my God. And to fly from New York to Montpelier, where Ellen was from, was $12, I think I mean it was $12 or $15. Oh my God, I think it was. I mean it was $12 or $15. It was so. You're a student, you've shot, you got to the airport, you showed up and if they had a seat, you can hop on the plane for nothing. So it was easy to travel then.
Speaker 1:You know, I, I was that, you know, like the, the, like that that was very surprising me. And then it was also like, oh you know, oh, I'm going to do these odd jobs and it's going to pay for my school. You know, like that kind of thing was that always gets me because I'm like, you know, we're, we're so buried right now with how, I mean, with how much everything costs, because even with, like, purchasing a home, you know, like my, my stepdaughter and her fiance, were attempting to buy their first house.
Speaker 1:They have two little boys and they had to. They had to back out entirely because it's so obscenely expensive to do anything. Today that it's. I mean, you people are barely making it.
Speaker 1:And you know, even like I, my mom was telling me at some point I forget what year it was, in the mid 90s ish, something around there she was like, yeah, your dad was making, I think it was like $50,000 a year, something to that effect. And she was like, yeah, like that was considered actually a really high salary for the time period. And I was like, really. And she was like, yeah, I'm like, my God, I'm like because now when people graduate from college, they're expecting to make 50, like out of the gate, they're expecting to make about 40 or $50,000 a year. And I had said to, I had said to my husband I'm like, you know I've way, I have far surpassed, you know, the income levels of my parents and you know it's wild to me because I'm like, I'm not like living this extravagant life, it's just that it costs so much to have a family now.
Speaker 2:You adjust for inflation. It's not that different. My father, blessed memory, pointed out to me once that lunch cost, lunch out in a restaurant cost an hour's wages. When he was, when he was growing up, during the depression, it was a, it was a quarter wow I was a young person it was four dollars.
Speaker 2:Now I don't even know what lunch costs out, because it's about 25 dollars. Yeah, like one person, yeah, for like an hour, for an hourly wage, but it's about, it has been about that, that's been about that, that's been a benchmark, I mean. And when you think about prices and how they change, I mean I sold Girl Scout cookies. Girl Scout cookies were 35 cents a box, oh my God. And now I don't know where they. You hear here they're $6. Oh yeah, so everything, you know everything, it's all. It's all relative, but it's not necessarily.
Speaker 1:It is harder to buy a house, for sure, um, but you know prices go up and but wages go up too, and you know things are I don't know, I have no, I have no way. Yeah, it's, it was just that. That was an interesting thing to to read and to kind of just see like, oh yeah, and they're just, they're just everyone's just doing their thing and they're gonna get a job as a dishwasher and they're going to pay the rent with that, and I was like what I was. So confused.
Speaker 2:Well, part of it, you know, and part of it too, is that even even people and you know I said I grew up near you in New Jersey and my parents were comfortable not wealthy, but they were comfortable but once you left home, your parents didn't support you. You were on your own, and that wasn't mean or anything, that was just the way it was.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Left home. I went to school. My parents gave me a little bit of money for the first year of school. Then I was on my own, wow. So I had to work.
Speaker 1:And I had to do you know what I had to do, and that wasn't uncommon, you know. So it's just amazing to see and it's also helpful to me also to read stuff like like your book, like to sisterhood, because it also helps to understand, you know why, and it honestly did help me think about it. I thought about my mom quite a bit when I was reading this. I'm like makes sense why we argue about certain things, because you know, it's a totally different generation. My grandmother. She's going to be 97 in March 2025. And she knows about the podcast. The podcast was named for her.
Speaker 1:Her name is Rose, so the podcast is actually for her and I've talked to her about the different topics and, like I talk, I talk with her about it and she's still, you know, she's still with it, she's still live, you know, with us, lucid and everything. So she and she told me she was like you know, I think this is such a wonderful thing. She was like because what you're doing would have been completely unheard of, and even like having the conversation, yeah, and she was like even the things you're talking about with like postpartum depression and you know the mental load of being a woman and like what all that means. And you know she knows like the whole purpose of this podcast is I want women to not feel alone. I want them to know like we're all going through these things together and you might feel isolated, but you're not and and there's, there's a whole, all of us are here. And she said it was just completely unheard of and you just didn't talk about these things and the violence against women. You don't talk about that.
Speaker 2:Oh no, it happened everywhere but no one talked about it. And there were so many things that I found out you know, going to my 20th, 40th high school reunion that I found out things happening to kids in my class, that no one talked about. Yeah, I didn't.
Speaker 1:Everything was very hush hush, everything was very much like behind closed doors. We don't talk about that, and I had received some of that messaging when I was growing up and I have since gotten rid of it because I didn't agree with it. I'm like this is crazy, like we need to talk about these things. I talk so much. I feel like I bother people.
Speaker 2:There was a lot of topics. People I mean, nobody talked. Nobody said the word cancer. It was the big C or it was whispered. People nobody talked about menstruation. I was just going to say that Nobody talked about menopause. That was so under the you just didn't talk about it. You didn't talk about it because some things were probably. I mean and I'm not sure that this is all I mean mostly it's a good thing to bring this out in the open, but there's some things that that are private, that should just take this generation and my parents generation.
Speaker 2:The big difference, um, when we were growing up, I I don't know how, exactly how to say this the children revolved around the parents' orbit, and now it's the other way around. There was no way. I mean, my mother was engaged and active and she worked outside the home too. She was home and she worked. She had her own business so she could work part-time, and we had a family business, so she was there too. But I do not remember. I mean, she was there too, but I do not remember if he was a kind mother, a good mother. I don't remember her getting down on the floor and playing Candyland. That was just not what parents did Interesting.
Speaker 2:Did you do your homework? Yes, Okay, that's all they asked. They didn't hover, they didn't anything. When it came time for college applications where are you going to apply I told them, okay, that parents weren't that involved in hello. Parents weren't involved in their children's lives the way they are now, and whether that's good or bad I don't know, but we certainly were a lot more independent than a lot of kids are today. That's interesting. When I was 12, I mean I have a friend who said, oh, I have to get a sitter for my 12 year old when I was 12, I was sitting for my three younger siblings.
Speaker 2:I was a newborn and that was a whole different, you know, it was just. It was just kids were expected to be I don't know older.
Speaker 1:You know, I I will say that there's there there's a huge and I mean we could talk about like that, that's like a huge discussion of like the whole the difference in how kids are being raised today, and it is a lot more like you're right, there is a flip there, that's happening and kids are not being raised as um independent, as, in my opinion, they should be in a lot of ways, one second um I never took a school bus.
Speaker 2:I mean, everybody walked to their name. Of course it was a baby, yeah, of course. But in high school, if you lived less than two miles um, yes, less than two miles from the high school, you won't yeah, and my mom said the same thing everyone, everyone would come out and walk the school day.
Speaker 1:I it's, it's amazing, honestly, and that that was one of the things that I really liked about reading the book was just being able to immerse myself in that time because you can I mean, I, historically, will look up like a google you know women, the women's movement, women, you know women's conferences, and you can look at the dates and you can look at but, but to hear the actual story and to the inner monologue of the characters was really incredibly important in my opinion, just because it it helps to drive home how different the thoughts were, yeah, and like how different the feeling was, and that's why I said what, what it must have been like fireworks in your brain when you went to that.
Speaker 2:Well, the thing that I kept. I've kept a journal since I was 10, and so it was easy to capture the teenager's voice, because I had it.
Speaker 1:That's cool. That's pretty cool, gail. Thank you so much for writing the book and, honestly, like listeners, I strongly recommend this book to sisterhood. You will fall for the characters and you will most likely end up with the same ending as me, where you're like where's the next one? Like I need to know what's going on. So I, gail, I can assure you like one if you do a pre-release, I will be first of mine to get a copy, because I I'm so excited about it.
Speaker 2:It's great to have positive feedback, especially from from a young woman like you, because it's we did. We did a, did a lot. You know we did a lot. And it was a cartoon I said mother's day I didn't know the author was, so I can't give credit and it was two young women saying all my mother wants from me is for the activism of the youth to not have been in vain, and I just really hit me. You know there's a we've come a way, but there's a long way to go.
Speaker 1:Yes, well, I'm here for it and I'm glad you're still here for it too.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Jenny. Thank you so much. This is delightful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, of course, gail. Thank you so much for being with us listeners. Thank you for hanging out with us. I'm going to link the book in the description of the podcast. I really no-transcript.
