Welcome to the Not Old Better Show. I'm Paul Wohlzank and this is episode number 216.

As part of our Smithsonian Associates Art of Living Interview series, we're joined today with Elizabeth

Griffith. Historian Elizabeth Griffith, a biographer of suffrage pioneer Elizabeth Katie Stanton leads a fast-paced series at the

Smithsonian Associates that examines the history of women in America from the

colonial period through second wave feminism.

Each session covers approximately a century of American history.

The sessions are ongoing and they trace the advances, setbacks, accomplishments, and

complications of the nation's diverse women.

American women experience our history on two timelines, one blue, one pink. The blue

traditional timeline marks accomplishments of male explorers, settlers, founders,

presidents, generals, overseers, business moguls.

All women experience those events, but not always in the same way.

Then there are events on a pink timeline. Access to education, employment, birth

control, campers, refrigeration, sewing machines, the right to vote. Can sometimes be more significant in the lives of women than the traditional

items. Finally, all women includes all women, women of different classes, races, religions, educational backgrounds,

marital status, maternal status, gender orientation, geography, and age. Before historians draw a conclusion about women, they should

ask which women. Fortunately, increasingly, they do.

So the blue and pink and brown and black and rainbow

narrative lines can weave together

to create a more complex, more colorful, and more accurate patchwork of American history.

That, of course, is our guest today, author, historian Elizabeth Betsy Griffith.

Betsy Griffith will be at the Smithsonian Associates program presenting

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