Adding a statue of a woman now would be like adding Elvis Presley to Mount Rushmore, or

maybe we should paint the Statue of Liberty Day Glow Pink to make the women happy.

Hey y'all and welcome to Unladylike where we find out what happens when women break the rules.

I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline and this week we might not be dedicating a whole episode to day glow lady Liberty Statues but we are talking about breaking the bronze ceiling.

Yes we are Caroline and for folks not familiar with this term. The bronze ceiling is basically the public monument version of the glass ceiling we hear about all the time in the workplace.

I actually think about the bronze ceiling anytime I'm driving to your house.

Right? Don't you? But I do because we live here in Atlanta and my route to your house happens to pass one of and I've done the math to one of two statues of real women who were at one point alive in the entire city.

This is an architect and every time I see her I fist pump her at first but then once I'm passed I'm like oh sorry you have no friends.

Which is ridiculous that she is one of just two women statues in the city because there's so many amazing women who deserve to be commemorated and there are two Atlanta women who could have statues sitting right here.

Who? Us. Well copper is one of my colors but seriously the bronze ceiling is a global phenomenon.

I mean based on the premise that women make up you know more than half the global population. It's wild how rarely you see statues dedicated to us in the United States alone 92% of our public statues depict foods 92%.

And I bet 92% of that 92% are just problematic white dudes. I like the way you break down stats. Well in in Britain of the roughly 1000 public statues around 20 of them depict women 20 out of 1000 Caroline.

Well but that doesn't count the 29 that are solely of Queen Victoria. Right. Right. If you're Queen Victoria you're good. Everybody else fend for yourselves.

And while there's been a ton of necessary attention on taking statues down because of all those problematic white dudes. There are a ton of efforts underway to get statues built to women.

Would you say that this whole breaking the bronze ceiling thing has been a monumental task.

Kristen. I would Caroline and that's why today we're going to meet one woman who spoiler alert did get a statue built.

And through her story we're going to find out just how much it takes to break the bronze ceiling and why it still matters today.

Okay Caroline let's meet the lady we're going to be talking about today.

All right we'll go through the drill. I'm Diane Carlson Evans and I'm the founder of the Vietnam Women's Memorial. Our primary goal was to place a bronze monument, a figurative monument, a monument that look like women in Washington DC.

So Caroline Diane is a veteran. She served in the Vietnam War from August 1968 to 1969 as an Army nurse. And I wanted to talk to Diane because she led the cause to build the first national memorial to female veterans in the US.

And just to give you an idea of what it looks like, right? It's a sculpture in the round with three figures. These women are wearing their fatigues. They're clearly like in the thick of action and they're all different ethnicities. So that's the success story.

But that of course is the end of our story. The beginning starts in rural Minnesota. This is where Diane grew up and her mom was a nurse. Her dad was as she puts it a stoic Scandinavian dairy farmer and growing up Diane got one message from her family about women's place in war.

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