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Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

Today is International Women's Day, a day dedicated to highlighting the fight for equality.

And so let me introduce you to Marilyn Loden.

She coined a phrase that paints the very image women have been fighting for decades.

The glass ceiling.

It was 1978.

Loden was speaking on a panel at the annual women's exposition.

She hadn't planned on making history.

She wasn't even supposed to be there.

Loden was 31, a mid-level manager at the New York Telephone Company. She was asked to attend the exposition after the company's

only female vice president couldn't make it. Four other women sat with Loden on a panel titled

Mir Mir on the wall.

The discussion centered on how women and their self-image were to blame for their lack of advancement in the workplace.

But when Loden's turn came to speak,

she thought about a recent project she was assigned at her company

to explore why more women weren't entering management positions. She had gathered enough

data that she felt confident the problem extended beyond what her colleagues were wearing or saying.

It wasn't these women's fault. It seemed to me, Loden said, that there was an invisible barrier

...