PROGRAM

This event is sold out. Please join us via Livestream.

Join us for the annual Phyllis L. Kossoff Lecture at Roosevelt House as we welcome acclaimed New York Times columnist Gail Collins to discuss her new book, No Stopping Us Now: The Adventures of Older Women in American History, a lively, eye-opening look at women and aging in America. Americans have always had a complicated relationship with aging: embrace it, deny it, defer it—and women have been on the front lines of the battle, willingly or not.

In her fascinating social history, Collins illustrates the dramatic changes in American attitudes toward women and aging over the decades. From the era of Plymouth Rock, when a woman was considered marriageable if “civil and under fifty years of age,” to a few generations later, when women were quietly retired to elderdom once beyond the optimum age for reproduction, to the first female presidential nominee, how we view women and aging has been a moving target. Throughout No Stopping Us Now we meet the luminaries who define the history of older women in America, including: Sojourner Truth, Mae West, Betty Ford, Ida May Fuller, Ella Baker, Jane Fonda, Hillary Clinton, Mary Church Terrell, Mother Jones, Susan B. Anthony, Betty Friedan, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Ms. Collins will be in conversation with acclaimed journalist and best-selling author Jessica Bennett, who was appointed the New York Times’ first gender editor in 2017 as part of an initiative to expand coverage of women and gender issues.