Highlighting Janet Yellen, the first woman as U.S. Secretary Treasury and Chair of the Federal Reserve.
Women’s history month’s origins can be traced back to 1981 when Congress passed a resolution that designated the week of March 7, 1982, as “Women’s History Week.” It was requested of President Reagan to issue a proclamation “calling upon the people of the United States to observe such week with appropriate ceremonies and activities.” Following this, Congress passed resolutions yearly for the next five years to designate one week in March as “Women’s History Week.” In 1987, Congress passed a resolution officially making the month of March “Women’s History Month.”
The proclamations made in the 80s were made to celebrate the efforts and contributions that have been made to the U.S. and to applaud the amazing achievements made by women throughout the country’s history.
Janet Yellen: A Woman of Firsts
Janet Yellen was sworn into office as the 78th Secretary of the Treasury of the United States on January 26, 2021. After spending nearly fifty years of her career in academia and public service, she took office. She’s not only the first woman but the first person in the history of America to have led the White House Council of Economic Advisors, the Federal Reserve, and the Treasury Department.
Secretary Yellen received her education in economics. She graduated from Brown University in 1967 and then earned her Ph.D. from Yale. Until 1976, she worked as an assistant professor at Harvard when she left the university and began working at the Federal Reserve Board. She returned to education in 1980 as a faculty member of the University of California at Berkley where she became the Eugene E. and Catherine M. Trefethen Professor of Business and Professor of Economics. She now holds the title of Professor Emeritus at UC Berkley.
Her Work with the Government:
President Bill Clinton, in 1994, appointed, at the time, Dr. Yeller to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. After holding this position for three years, President Clinton named her Chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. In 2004, Secretary Yeller began her third tenure at the Federal Reserve. At this time she was President of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Fransisco. While in this position she spotted an economic trend that was very worrying to her. It was a bubble in home values. After the burst of the housing bubble in 2008, Secretary Yellen assisted in managing the financial crisis and recession that followed.
President Barack Obama appointed her Vice-Chair of the Federal Reserve in 2010. He then nominated her to succeed Fed Chair Benjamin Bernanke as the nation’s top central banker. She served as Chair of the Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2018. In December of 2020, then-President-elect-Biden nominated her to the post of Treasury Secretary. When speaking on Dr. Yellen he said that “She has spent her career focused on unemployment and the dignity of work… she understands what it means to people and their communities when they have good, decent jobs.”
[…] recognize it as part of the grand performance of how the US banking system works in tandem with the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve—a performance that keeps the pulse of the American economy […]