name. three years later, women were allowed into the clerk's role. their salaries were capped at $600. i can say with pride that the office of the treasurer has truly helped bring women into the treasury. during the civil war, at the treasury of the united states approached the secretary of the treasury and said you wanted to employ women. as was the case of most wartime experiences when men were scarce, women were hired and massive -- enmass. just two years later, a woman was hired as the first counterfeit treasurer. she was hailed as the sherlock holmes of the treasury. the female sherlock holmes was one of the many exceptional

winning in this hall. the first black woman hired in treasury was sophia holmes. she worked as a custodian. the division of issue at $15 per month, and became famous for finding two hundred thousand dollars that had been mistakenly thrown away as trash. when she died in 190079 -- in 1979, the secretary of the treasury was among the notables at her funeral. another woman hired in the early part of the 20th century, that congressional members repeatedly asked her to interpret charts and graphs for them. she was appointed the first woman treasurer by president truman, and the position has been held by women ever since. women have held other leadership roles throughout the years.

recent standouts include one of our panelists, sheila bair, who served as assistant secretary for financial institutions from to the someone to 2002 -- from 2001-2001. 2. too often girls are told what subjects they should study, what interest they should have and what jobs they should do. to all young girls, students and professionals who are watching us today, it is ok to like math and science. it is ok to like economics. it is ok to enter a field dominated by men. we need you. follow your dreams, and one day you will be the leaders of this nation, leaders in finance, leaders in economics, and leaders in government. one day, one of you may stand before us as secretary of the treasury.

the women you will see today on the panels, in the hallways, and on the walls of this room have a place of the trail for you. it is up to you to reach that mountaintop, and for all of us to help you get there. thank you. [applause] i would now like to introduce our moderator for the first panel, maria bartiromo. our first panel is titled "women drivers of the economic recovery: pathways to success." it will be moderated by maria bartiromo. she is an award winning journalist and author. in 1995, she was the first journalist to report live from the floor of the new york stock exchange on a daily basis. she covered basic news for the unscripted morning program, "squawk box."

we are very happy that she was able to join us. [applause] >> thank you very much. it is great to see you all. i am thrilled to be here with you. it is an honor to chair the state with the women who are on their way up. but first, we are going to take the podium down. [laughter] sheila bair is chairman of the fdic. mary shapiro, elizabeth warren it is great to have you here.

i am honored to share the stage with you. i thought i would start by having you give us a sense of your day today. our first goal today is to talk about your role and where you are today. we would like to get a lot of feedback from everyone in the audience, on the twister, and in e-mail t-mailwiller -- on twitter and in e-mail. elisabeth, will you start. what is your day to day like? >> i am located still in the academic world. my goals consist of things -- my days consist of things like teaching, office hours and the like. in addition to that, i serve on the congressional oversight panel. we turn out a report every single month.

it is like doing a term paper every 30 days, on some aspect of the t.a.r.p. program, how deeply -- how the money is being spent, and if we are accomplishing our goals. i also continue to talk about the economics of a middle-class families, which i have been doing for a long time now. i advocate for changes in the financial system that would be helpful to those families, to take them out of the line of gunfire that they have been in. >> do you feel successful? >> dubai? >o i? >> do you pinch yourself that you are in this position? >> i feel amazed all of the time. i have felt amazed for 25 years. [laughter] i wake up every morning and i think about what i am going to

get to do today. my eyes plame open and i am ready to go. -- my eyes fling open and i am ready to go. >> maria, how about you? >> my day today is incredibly varied. often, i will have a meeting with the secretary of the treasury people -- secretary of the treasury. it has been an incredible year of economic issues. never has there been a time when economics were so much at the center, everything from a recovery and rescue to health care. i think that has been probably the part of my life i least expected. i think somebody said, no matter what you started as, when you come to washington, you become

a health-care economist. that has certainly been true for me. >> every day you get up and you have meetings on the calendar with the secretary of the treasury and the president of the united states. how many times do you see them? >> i see tim a couple of times a day. i meet with the president at least once a week to discuss economic issues. in the beginning, it was every single day and with the president. i came home one day and told my husband i had to meet with the president for three hours. my husband said, "listen to what you just said." [laughter] i have a the pinch me moments.

sometimes i am walking into the west wing and i think, "i cannot believe i am here. " >> mary, you certainly have great endeavors on your plate. talk about your day today. >> meetings, meetings, meetings. i am trying to reinvigorate and redirected the agency back towards it court mission. we are trying to change the culture a little bit. i am engaged in a regulatory reform and all of the various proposals. i also am trying to launch the agenda of a rule making and enforcement cases. i have meetings on the lots of different subjects, which makes the job fascinating.

>> for all of you, not only do you have enormously important jobs and enormously important issues on your agenda every day, but we are at a particularly amazing moment in time and have been in the last year. sheila bair, your job as well. it is amazing the number of banks that have failed. you have been showing true leadership in this recovery. tell us about your day today. >> banks are first and foremost on our minds these days. we want to make sure that depositors are protected. we spend a lot of time identifying banks that will ban and planning appropriately for a smooth transition for bank -- banks that will fail and planning appropriately for a smooth transition for bank

customers and when that happens. we also have an insurance component. we have a receivership function when banks fail, we have to make sure deposits are protected. we also charge a premium for deposit insurance. now we are reviewing our assessments of this experience and the things we have learned to adjust some of the elements of those premiums. i am also the federal supervisor for about 5000 state-chartered banks. regulatory reform on the hill has taken a lot of time, but i think it is time well spent. we are working with the treasury and the sec to try to get a

better grip on the finance. >> do think -- do you think that women bring in something specific to the role? sometimes people ask me to speak about women in the finance, but i say that in a long-term women and men are the same. but then again, women and men are different. what kind of a different values do think women bring to the table? >> if i could answer that in the context of developing country, which are fresh in my mind, because i have just participated in a program called vital that helps women around diplopia -- a vital voices that helps women around the globe. a woman who was given an award talked about how women in

developing countries not only start businesses, but they keep their money in the family to provide their children with education and health care. they are better creditors. they do a better job of repaying their loans. women's attitude toward money is to produce value and support families. there entrepreneur ship is really proving that. >> so there is a little more of a conservative view in terms of saving and investing appeared >> -- investing. >> i am not sure that there is that much of a difference. mainly, it just doubles the talent pool. if you can have all types represented, that is very helpful.

>> i am with christine, and yet, i think sometimes there are different perspectives that women bring to the table. i think about a conference that i went to several years ago on the financial innovation. all of the conversation was exclusively about mortgage- backed securities, derivatives, derivatives squared, cubed, all of these cool things. there were only two women in the room, and they wanted to talk about what financial innovation has meant at the household level, the financial -- the family level. that has meant things like credit cards that nobody can understand and new forms of tricks and traps and other things that i have written a lot about. the point is, this point was

made rather directly by one of the men at the conference, no, there is only one of view of what constitutes innovation. there is only one perspective we want to bring to this. that has to do with macro, big money. the notion of what happens at the family level as a driver of the economics and the fallout from some of the things that have happened, was just not on the table. can a man see that? there are certainly those who did, who do, who care about this, but it seems that women are more willing to raise these issues. >> that makes sense, because you are coming to the table with a different sense of tools. you are the head of a family and perhaps thinking a little bit differently. >> i think it is important to have a diversity of experience.

regardless of your gender or social class, it is important to have that diversity. when you have that willingness to challenge him in the status quo, that is a really good result at the end of the day. it does double our work pool, which is terrific, but it also gives a different perspective that will ultimately lead to better decisions. >> have you faced barriers as a result of being a woman along the way? what kind of tough situations did you face it because you were in a boy's club? >> what did i not face? [laughter] aside from being the only woman

at however many different houses -- [unintelligible] [laughter] i think when i was very young and started teaching in a field like this, there were people who were actually willing to say that i must not know what i am talking about because i am a female. >> how did you react to that? >> i remember a student who was older than i was and who had made a lot more money than i was ever going to make in my life. he had come back to school. i would teach a course on putting together business deals and how financing works.

and as i would teach, he would say, "yak, yak." he would decide loudly as i would keep teaching -- he would sigh loudly as i would keep teaching. i would think, "i am bigger than this." students finally came to me and said, "professor warren, this should not be happening. give us a word and we will stoppage -- will stop it." [laughter] i realized how he was undermining the entire dynamic of this class. so the next class, and we had a dialogue and really found out how much he knew about the

financing. it turned out, i knew a lot more than him. i think the truth is, i think we ignored the truth. sometimes what is required is that you really have to just saw somebody in at the mouth. and then everyone can relax and say, "oh." [laughter] >> christine, give us your story. >> i have been there. i think economics is opening up. very often, the top candidate are women. i think the world is changing. in my field, macro-economics, it is still a very male dominated. i am often the only woman in the

room, or one of two. it is very isolating. the place i feel a disadvantage is and not professional, but much more of the casual, the forming of a relationship. there is still a barrier. it is something that is hard to get over. i think the other thing that i have definitely noticed in the the white house and elsewhere is the difference in how people communicate. i have never had to interrupt people before in my life. [laughter] there is simply an aggressiveness, you have to push your way in there. you have to speak up, even when there is not a gap in the conversation. [laughter] >> isn't it interesting that 60% of the higher degrees today are going to swim in and around the

world, even in iran? 60% of women are getting higher degrees in law school, medical school and business school. and yet, after all of that training, you get the job, and you make 20% less than your male counterpart. >> i was just reminded of the first time i stood up to give a speech a number of years ago. talk about a male-dominated industry. derivatives trading and commodities trading was surely that way. i remember standing up there and searching for the one or two women in the audience i could focus on, thinking there would be some empathy for the position i was in. it gives you a certain resilience and a certain confidence. you have to go through a very isolating experience in a field

that is particularly male dominated. i think compensation issues will take time. clearly, most law school graduates now are women. that is probably true in other financial fields. at some point, the balance will tip. women will be in a position to be paid equally as men. why it has not happened yet is a mystery and an unfortunate circumstance. >> the reason everyone gave up was because we have to leave it to go have babies and then come back. then we will have to start at a lower level or a lower pay scale. is that it, or is it something else? >> from now on, years are going to ask, if you were hiring a man or a woman with the same resonate, would you pay the man

-- same a resume, i would be paid the man of less -- same resume, would you pay the man less? >> i think you just have to recognize that it is a fact of life. you have to work harder and xl at your job -- and excel at your job. the motherhood thing can work against us. there is a perception that if you have a husband you don't need the money as much. >> the employer looks at you and assumes your husband makes a lot of money. >> exactly. i will say though, i think being a woman has its advantages too. it depends on who you deal with,

but i know that early in my career, i received a lot of mentoring from senator bob dole. i worked with fathers who had daughters and who had family situations where it was not expected for women to go out and work. i think many of them recognized the need to support young professional women. the do not think i would have gotten as much support if i -- i do not think i would have gotten as much support if i was not a woman. >> we want to get to all of the questions from the audience, as well as people online. let me to our state of the states before we get to that.

christina, if you were talking to students coming out of school right now, what would you advise them? it is a tough economy. we all know that. what would be your advice for people today? >> i think we are on the road to recovery. i think we are a lot better off than we were a year ago. that was certainly a frightening time. i think the economy is growing again. it is still going to be a very tough job market for quite a while. that is the sad reality. i will put in a plug. i think we need to be doing as much as possible to make the unemployment rate come down much more quickly than it isfahan -- then it an it is. i think being flexible is going to be unbelievably important. i think perseverance is

important. getting the ideal job in the ideal place is going to be much harder. you will need to say, "let me make the most of where i am now ." where are the jobs? education and health care are the fields that have grown through this whole recession. we anticipate them a continuing to grow. professional service industries are going to continue to grow. i am hopeful that manufacturing is going to come back. there will be needed there for managers, people coming out of college, as well as workers looking for a good paying job with just a high-school education. >> any advice for people watching right now wanting to get ahead in at their jobs? >> getting a job is critical.

getting a job in something you love to do is really the right answer for long-term economic success and long-term happiness. i understand that that will be difficult for people coming out of school right now, but if you can focus on what really gives you a desire to wake up every morning and rush into work, that is a right way to go. >> i have to put in a plug. it is a good time to go back to school. go get extra training. get a master's degree. get a graduate degree. get an a if you do not have one -- bennett and -- get an aa if you do not have one. you can also look at a really lousy dropping -- really lousy job market in a different way.

if you do not get your ideal job, no one will hold it against you. that means you can be much more creative about the types of things you will take on. he may not get a great job on paper the first time out, but you could find opportunities once your foot is in the door. maybe you had a grand plan for five years, 10 years, and a path to be on. let me tell you something. most of the successful people i know do not have a path that looks like the one that they started on. they have had to read-shift. re. -shift -- re-shift.

commit to two years. look for a job that just could make you a more interesting, thoughtful person. >> elizabeth, everything is changing. you need new skills sets. any thoughts on that, sheila? >> we are hiring. [laughter] we are highly counter-cyclical. [laughter] i really have nothing to add. i think you need to be flexible now. for those entering the work force to find problems in the current job environment, i think going back to school is a good idea. we will get through this. unemployment is the central issue for this administration right now, so we will