Caroline Bird (1) (1915–2011)

Caroline Bird was born in New York City. Her father was a lawyer and activist newspaper editor who encouraged her to write. At age 16, she became the youngest member of the Vassar Class of 1935. She left college after her junior year to marry Edward A. Menuez, a teacher, with whom she had a daughter. She later earned a B.A. at the University of Toledo and an M.A. in comparative literature at the University of Wisconsin.

During World War II, she held several research and editing jobs. After a divorce in 1945, she remarried to J. Thomas Mahoney, also a writer, and gave birth to a son at age 46. She worked as a freelance magazine writer before publishing her first book, The Invisible Scar (1966), on the Great Depression, which established her as an author. Her second book, Born Female (1968), became a feminist classic and made her one of the "founding mothers" of the women's movement in the USA. Subsequent books included The Crowding Syndrome (1972); Everything a Woman Needs to Know to Get Paid What She's Worth (1973); The Case Against College (1975); Enterprising Women (1976) and The Two-Paycheck Marriage (1979). Caroline Bird was a popular lecturer and television commentator and a a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors and the American Sociology Association.