As she’s written her books about women, she would discover nuggets of information that she kept in the back of her mind.įor example, when the first colonists came from England and sent home for wives, they asked for women who were “civil and 50 years of age or under.” Her new book examines how the concept of an “older woman” has changed over the centuries.Ĭollins, who is 74, said that naturally getting older has made it interesting. She has written several other books about them, including “America’s Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates and Heroines” (2003) and “When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present” (2009). I didn’t want to write a column that makes people want to throw themselves out of the window.”Īmerican women have interested Collins for a long time. She began writing humorously because when she was covering local politics, she said, “I was going crazy about how bad things were. She is on the Pulitzer Prize board, and is reading the nominated material right now. In the 1980s she worked for United Press International, then moved to the New York Daily News, Newsday, and finally the Times in 1995, where she became the first female editorial page editor from 2001 to 2007. She founded a news service called the Connecticut State News Bureau, providing coverage of state capital and Connecticut politics, when she moved to Connecticut with her husband, Dan Collins. People hadn’t seen the humor in legislatures before, she said. Writing humorously about serious subjects goes back to her days in the 1970s writing about the Connecticut legislature. Her columns at NYT blend humor and politics. READ: OPEN BOOK/OPEN MIND: THE LIFE OF ROBIN WILLIAMS READ: BRODESSER-AKNER TO DISCUSS ‘FLEISHMAN’ She will be in Montclair this Sunday, March 1, to talk about her new book, “No Stopping Us Now: A History of Older Women in America,” with Dale Russakoff in the latest Montclair Public Library Open Book/Open Mind event. “We liberated the goddamn bathroom,” Collins said with a laugh. She went to the legislature and asked, “What about disabled people?”Ī sign went up: “This bathroom is for men and handicapped women only.” She and Hall began using the men’s room in the middle of the night, rather than going down three flights of stairs in the dark. The guys had a drinking room in the back for lobbyists, and women were not allowed in.” We were stuck in a backup press room in the attic, and the only bathroom on that floor was the men’s room. “I had a partner, Trish Hall, who became the op-ed editor of the New York Times. “Almost no women were covering the state legislature while I was there,” Collins said. She covered Connecticut legislatures when she was starting out as a journalist in the 1970s. By GWEN to any woman who’s been in a legislature and she’s got a bathroom story, says Gail Collins.

America's Women by Gail Collins