Look for women’s signatures on money next year

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Thursday helped mark a milestone in U.S. history when she held up a newly minted $5 bill signed for the first time ever by two women. Yellen’s signature will appear alongside that of U.S. Treasurer Lynn Malerba, the first Native American in that position.

Yellen joked during a stop in Texas about the bad handwriting of some of her male predecessors and said, “I will admit, I spent some quality time practicing my signature.”

“Two women on the currency for the first time is truly momentous,” added Malerba, who traveled with Yellen to a Bureau of Engraving and Printing facility in Fort Worth to provide their signatures.

They ceremonially signed fresh sheets of bills in $1 and $5 denominations and posed with samples to mark the historymaking moment. The new notes will go into circulation next year.

Yellen made her reputation as a stoic chair of the Federal Reserve and a shrewd forecaster, and now is at the forefront of far-flung efforts to use economic levers to help stop Russia’s war in Ukraine, employ tax policy to protect the planet from climate change and oversee a massive effort to strengthen the beleaguered IRS.

Anusha Chari, an economist who chairs the American Economic Association’s Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession, calls Yellen’s signature on U.S. currency “a huge milestone, but it also shows us how far we have to go.”

The Treasury Department was created in 1789, and until Yellen only white men had led it.