During a recent appearance on Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen faced an awkward question: After nearly two years in the job, why was the signature of her predecessor, Steven T. Mnuchin, still scrawled across the nation's currency?

The answer, she explained, was a quirk of currency design that required a new treasurer of the United States to be in place before the money could be remade with both of their signatures.

That finally happened on Thursday when the first bank notes bearing the name of America's first female Treasury secretary were unveiled. The occasion was another crack in the glass ceiling for Ms. Yellen and the notoriously male-dominated field of economics.

The bills will also bear the name of Marilynn Malerba, the first Native American to hold the role of treasurer. The first $1 and $5 notes with their signatures will enter circulation next month.

The Treasury secretary noted that things have not always come easily for women in economics. When Ms. Yellen completed her doctorate at Yale in 1971, she recalled, there were no other women in her cohort.

In her remarks, Ms. Yellen noted that while women have appeared on American coinage, there is unfinished work to be done to diversify America's currency.

she said.

The initiative to add Tubman to the $20 bill was first proposed by Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew in 2016 but stalled during the Trump administration under Mr. Mnuchin's watch. The Biden administration said last year that it was exploring ways to accelerate the release of a redesigned $20 note, but the complexity of developing new anti-counterfeiting technology continues to be an obstacle. The new $20 notes are scheduled to come out in 2030.

On Thursday, Ms. Yellen - who is known to have a penchant for exacting preparation - acknowledged that she spent some signing her name clearly before submitting it to the director of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

To read the complete article, see:
Yellen Is First Female Treasury Secretary With Signature on U.S. Dollar(https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/08/business/janet-yellen-signature-dollar.html)

Malerba choked up when she talked about seeing her signature on the new bills as the first Native American treasurer, remembering the financial struggles her parents and six siblings faced when she was growing up. "This moment is history," she said. "Truly, two women on the currency for the first time is momentous. You are all making history today with all of us."

Gita Gopinath, first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, welcomed the new bills and said she was "personally very excited" to spend one for the first time.

"Janet Yellen is an inspiration for all economists. It means a lot to me and my colleagues that she will be the first female Treasury secretary with her signature on the dollar note," she said.

In her remarks, Yellen said Treasury led the first major effort to hire women into the federal government during the Civil War, and singled out Jennie Douglas as the first woman hired in that cohort and Sophia Holmes, the first Black woman.

To read the complete article, see:
Yellen honors pioneers as U.S. prints first banknotes with women's signatures(https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/yellen-honors-fellow-pioneers-us-prints-first-banknotes-with-two-womens-2022-12-08/)