[1] Born on April 15, 1915, in New York City, Caroline Bird became the youngest member of the Vassar College class of 1935 at the age of 16, but left after her junior year to marry; she later earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Toledo and a Master of Arts degree in comparative literature at the University of Wisconsin.
Years later when Sofia Montenegro, an award-winning Nicaraguan journalist and prominent feminist activist, was asked how she became a revolutionary, she said that she would never forget the book that had changed her life; she was 16 years old when she read Born Female: the High Cost of Keeping Women Down.
[3] According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first time the term sexism appeared in print was in Bird's speech "On Being Born Female", which was delivered before the Episcopal Church Executive Council in Greenwich, Connecticut, and subsequently published on November 15, 1968, in Vital Speeches of the Day (p. 6).
[4] In 1977, Bird became an associate of the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP).
[5] Bird was a consultant to the National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year in 1977 and was the chief writer of its report, The Spirit of Houston (1978).