FEARLESS – Rosie the Riveter

Post #90. Rosie’s Daughters: The “First Woman To” Generation Tells Its Story by Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett

UPDATE: Thursday, April 19, 2018

Watch out NYSE — here comes the Fearless Girl. In our article below posted earlier this month, we discussed the value of the word “fearless” as we apply it not only to Rosie the Riveter but to all women. One of our wonderful readers had taken her Rosie the Riveter Legacy Bandana over to the Fearless Girl statue in New York City, tied it on her, and snapped a photo that she shared with us.

But what was to become of Fearless Girl? She didn’t have a permanent home.

As of this morning, we had the great news that Fearless Girl will soon have a permanent home outside the New York Stock Exchange.

Perseverance is the attribute that has been important. The artist of the Charging Bull said that Fearless Girl took away from his sculpture and wanted it removed as soon as it was installed. Note that Charging Bull is an 11-foot-tall, 7,100-pound statue while Fearless Girl is 50 inches. More details are in the original article below.

But we just want to add one more item of interest — since the Fearless Girl statue was installed a little more than a year ago over 150 companies have added at least one female director to their boards.

I don’t know about you, but this is progress worth working toward.

¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶Our Original Article¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶

Fearless?

Rosie the Riveter is:
STRONG
COURAGEOUS
EMPOWERED.

But what about:
FEARLESS?

Women who worked during WWII, the “We Can Do It” generation, have become an important role model for follow-on generations. Rosies proved that women could tackle a wide variety of jobs in the workplace and do as well, and in many cases, even better than men.

The three adjectives we apply to Rosie the Riveter, Rosie’s Daughters, and all succeeding generations of women are “strong,” “courageous,” and “empowered.” For 2018 Women’s History Month, we’d like to add another adjective: “fearless.” Why?

FEARLESS may have always been a good way to describe women, but the past few months have focused our attention on just how fearless they (we) are. We’ve seen women stand up for their rights, seen them speak out against sexual harassment, and this past weekend we saw young women speak to a crowd of hundreds of thousands about the need to protect their lives — the lives of youth — from gun violence. All the speakers were amazing but one eleven year old, Naomi Wadler, addressed the large gathering with poise and grace that most of us cannot even imagine. This next generation of women are already fearless.

In the midst of new hashtags such as #metoo, #neveragain, #marchforourlives, #enoughisenough, we want to draw attention to a statue that was unveiled a year ago on International Women’s Day 2017. This sculpture is known as FEARLESS GIRL.

You’ve probably seen pictures of it, but we have a special photo taken by a member of this Rosie’s Daughters community — Elizabeth Spiegl. She took her Rosie’s Legacy Bandana that we created and tied it on Fearless Girl. Then she took the picture and send it to us. Thanks Elizabeth.

Elizabeth has also started a petition to urge more women to be leaders. If you are interested, you can sign the petition at this link:

https://www.change.org/p/msnbc-desperately-needed-women-leaders

HERE’S TO WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH.

Don’t know about Fearless Girl?

On International Women’s Day in 2017, the bronze Fearless Girl statue was installed across from the iconic Charging Bull near Wall Street. It was only to be there for a few days, according to the permit. However, it was instantly popular and so the permit was extended for one year — through International Women’s Day in 2018. That date has now passed. A change.org petition (signed by 40,000 people) asked New York City to make the statue a permanent installation.

The artist, Kristen Visbal, is working with the mayor’s office to either get another location for the statue or for it to be left in place. As of this blog post, no decision has been made.