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In Rosie’s Daughters: The “First Woman To” Generation Tells Its Story, Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett have written an inspiring collective memoir of the generation of women who excelled at “firsts.” These women, born during World War II, were shaped by and then helped to shape the American historic, economic, political and socio-cultural landscape.

They were the pioneers who charted the paths for the Boomer generation. From the vantage point of their sixties, they share their experiences and insights with their own and younger generations.

The figurative mother of this generation, Rosie the Riveter, is a mythic figure in our culture, with good reason—she built ships, flew bombers and filled thousands of other essential wartime jobs, upending traditional views of “women’s work.” When the war was over, however, American industry thanked Rosie and sent her home.

Rosie, who had known the economic dislocations of The Depression and the employment and service opportunities of the war period, raised her daughters with a mixed message – stay home as wife and mother – be prepared “in case.” Rosie’s Daughters grew up and flung wide the doors of employment opportunity that Rosie had unlocked. These women can claim more career “firsts” and greater socio-cultural change than any previous generation.

Their stories, recounted in Rosie’s Daughters, show how the post-war education boom, the sexual revolution and the Pill, civil rights and gender equality, the Vietnam War, NOW and consciousness raising, Roe v. Wade, no-fault divorce and other momentous events influenced their lives and shaped their remarkable journeys.

The book is a unique combination of personal stories, research, history, photography and the authors’ reflections, engagingly written and beautifully presented. This is social history without the turgid prose, a compilation of interviews without the annoying interruption of flow—even a motivational book without the saccharine—in the appealing voice of perceptive authors.

Rosie’s Daughters will make you laugh and occasionally cry as you read the personal struggles and achievements of this remarkable generation of women who continue to influence our world. Learn from the lessons of their lives as you shape your future.

About the Authors
Matilda Butler– Rosie’s Daughters draws on Butler’s 35 years of research training and work experiences. She is an author, life writing coach, social psychologist, and entrepreneur.

Butler taught and conducted research at Stanford University, created the nationwide Women’s Educational Equity Communication Network, and co-founded Knowledge Access International, a software company specializing in CD-ROM information products. After selling the company in 1997, she returned to research and writing that resulted in Rosie’s Daughters. She helps women tell their life stories in her classes on women’s memoir writing. (www.WomensMemoirs.com)

She graduated magna cum laude from Boston University, received her M.A. in communication research from Stanford University and her Ph.D. in social psychology from Northwestern University. She has been listed in Who’s Who in the West since 1978 and Who’s Who of American Women since 1975.

Like the women in Rosie’s Daughters, Butler is a member of the “First Woman To” Generation and also had to find her way in a world turned upside down by the social, cultural and historic changes of the last 40+ years. She currently lives on a hillside near Monterey Bay where she writes, teaches, tends her Italian olive and Meyer lemon orchards and feeds the fawns and an occasional mountain lion.

Kendra Bonnett– Bonnett is an award-winning author and business executive with 20 years experience in direct marketing, public relations and marketing communications for both international corporations and smaller, entrepreneurial firms.

Bonnett started her career as editor for the Women’s Educational Equity Communication Network where she and Butler first explored creative ways to make information more easily accessible. Bonnett entered the online, interactive field early, designing computer curriculum for secondary school students, and co-founding Digit, one of the first computer magazines for children. Later she founded Profit: Information Technology for Entrepreneurs and Beyond Computing, a joint magazine publishing venture between IBM and The New York Times, and served as Profit’s first editor in chief.

She joined Mark Stevens at the formation of Mark Stevens & Company and served as president of the results-oriented marketing and communication firm. Wanting more time to write and conduct historical analysis, she moved to Downeast Maine where she worked on Rosie’s Daughters while continuing to help small firms make effective use of their promotion dollars with creative Internet marketing strategies.

Bonnett graduated cum laude from Arizona State University with degrees in history and anthropology, has a Master’s degree in history from The College of William and Mary and further graduate studies in history at the University of California at Santa Barbara. A Baby Boomer, Bonnett gratefully acknowledges walking through the doors opened by the “First Woman To” Generation.

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