NYT's Gail Collins Talks Women, Age, Politics At Fairfield Event

FAIRFIELD, CT — The Fairfield Museum and History Center recently hosted New York Times columnist Gail Collins to kick off its lecture series honoring the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage.

Collins, who was the first woman to be the editorial page editor of the Times, spoke Feb. 9 to a crowded room about her new book, "No Stopping Us Now: Age, Politics and the Adventures of Older Women in American History."

A former Connecticut resident, Collins discussed farm wives of the early 1800s, whose place in society as skilled workers faded with the rise of urbanization. She also gave an overview of how women of a certain age were treated throughout the 20th century, from being considered valuable employees during World War II to leaders in the Civil Rights Movement to a new source of earning potential for families during the 1970s.

Before her talk last weekend, Collins sat down with Fairfield Patch Field Editor Anna Bybee-Schier to discuss the changing role of older women in culture and politics.

Bybee-Schier: If you could just tell me a little bit about why you wanted to write this book, specifically.

Collins: It always stuck with me that when the old early colonists, who were all guys, would write back looking for wives, they were so desperate, you know, for women, and their criteria was, 'Must be civil and under 50 years of age,' so I thought, 'Hmm, these things have changed up and down.' And then working on another book about the '50s and '60s and '70s, I ran across those old ads for hair care ... the cutline was, 'You're not getting older, you're getting better.' The copy was, 'These days any woman who's 25 is old.' And I thought, 'Wow,' and now we have Nancy Pelosi and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

So obviously there's been patterns here — what's the story, why is it that some periods older women do much better than others? And so that's why I started the book.

Bybee-Schier: That's actually a nice transition to my next question, which is: The book chronicles attitudes toward women and aging in American history. Relatively speaking, how do women of, say, over 50, have it today compared to previous generations?

Collins: Pretty good. There's obviously exceptions. If you're in the entertainment industry, for instance, you'd have been better off probably as you age being back in the period where there weren't any movies and where people just got up on stage and, you know, acted out.

Bybee-Schier: Would you say that the political climate is better or worse for women today compared to, like, 20 years ago?

Collins: All my life the thing I got to see is, for the first time in the history of western civilization, women becoming a part of society on the same level as men, being able, if they choose, to live out their lives in the same way that men do. That's never really happened before and I got to see it happen and all the steps of it along the way in my lifetime, which just knocks me out whenever I think about it.

Bybee-Schier: To get a little bit more specific, how would you say age and gender affects some of the recent women front runners in the presidential field? I would say probably the first ones to come to mind would be Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren. They're over 65. Is that a hurdle they had to overcome in the public eye? Is there some ways that that is an asset?

Collins: You look right now at the candidates on the Democratic side, and the one candidate over 70 that nobody talks about their age is Elizabeth Warren, while everybody obsesses about Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. She's a little bit younger than they are, but still, she is 70 years old and you just never hear that come up at all when people are talking about her, so that's a good sign.

To learn more about the Fairfield Museum's lecture series, Voting Was Just the Beginning: 100 Years of Women Making History, visit www.fairfieldhistory.org/programs-events/.