Pink Collar Workers: Rebecca Lukens

Womanica

Acast Creative Studios

History, Society & Culture, Education

4.3 • 920 Ratings

🗓️ 15 August 2025

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Rebecca Lukens (1794-1854) is known as the first female CEO in the United States. She ran Brandywine Iron Works and Nail Factory, successfully guiding it through a difficult economic recession and a rapidly industrializing workplace.

For Further Reading:

This month, we're bringing back some of our favorite Womanica episodes you might have missed! We'll be talking about Pink Collar Workers: women who revolutionized jobs that have traditionally been called "women's work." Through their lives, they created a more just and humane world for us today.

History classes can get a bad rap, and sometimes for good reason. When we were students, we couldn't help wondering... where were all the ladies at? Why were so many incredible stories missing from the typical curriculum? Enter, Womanica. On this Wonder Media Network podcast we explore the lives of inspiring women in history you may not know about, but definitely should.

Every weekday, listeners explore the trials, tragedies, and triumphs of groundbreaking women throughout history who have dramatically shaped the world around us. In each 5 minute episode, we'll dive into the story behind one woman listeners may or may not know–but definitely should. These diverse women from across space and time are grouped into easily accessible and engaging monthly themes like Educators, Villains, Indigenous Storytellers, Activists, and many more. Womanica is hosted by WMN co-founder and award-winning journalist Jenny Kaplan. The bite-sized episodes pack painstakingly researched content into fun, entertaining, and addictive daily adventures.

Womanica was created by Liz Kaplan and Jenny Kaplan, executive produced by Jenny Kaplan, and produced by Grace Lynch, Maddy Foley, Brittany Martinez, Edie Allard, Carmen Borca-Carrillo, Taylor Williamson, Sara Schleede, Paloma Moreno Jimenez, Luci Jones, Abbey Delk, Adrien Behn, Alyia Yates, Vanessa Handy, Melia Agudelo, and Joia Putnoi. Special thanks to Shira Atkins.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is an IHeart podcast.
0:04.5	Adventure should never come with a pause button.
0:07.1	Remember Movie Pass?
0:08.4	All the movies you wanted for just nine bucks?
0:11.1	I'm Bridget Todd, host of There Are No Girls on the Internet.
0:13.9	And this season, I'm digging into the tech stories we weren't told.
0:17.4	Starting with Stacey Spikes, the black founder of movie pass who got pushed out of the company
0:21.6	he built.
0:22.8	Everybody's trying to knock you down and it's not going to work and no one's going to like it.
0:27.3	And then boom, it's everywhere.
0:29.3	And that was that moment.
0:30.7	Listen to there are no girls on the internet on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
0:36.8	Hello, from Wonder Media Network. I'm Jenny Kaplan, and this is Womanica.
0:41.6	This August, we're bringing back some of our favorite Womanica episodes you might have missed.
0:45.9	All month we'll be talking about pink-collar workers.
0:49.0	These women revolutionized jobs that have traditionally been called women's work.
0:53.1	Through their lives, they created a more
0:54.6	just and humane world for us today. With that, here's one of our favorite episodes.
1:02.2	Hello, from Wonder Media Network, I'm Jenny Kaplan, and this is Womanica. This month, we're
1:08.4	talking about workers, women who fought for labor rights and shaped the way we do business today.
1:13.4	They advocated and innovated to make the office, wherever it is, a more equitable place.
1:19.4	Today's womanican is recognized by many as the first woman CEO in the United States.
	...

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