Frances Perkins Makes History: First Woman Cabinet Secretary

Frances Perkins became the first woman to serve in a US presidential cabinet when Franklin Roosevelt appointed her Secretary of Labor on March 4, 1933. She held the position for twelve years, the longest tenure of any Labor Secretary, and became the architect of the New Deal's most enduring social programs. Perkins had witnessed the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911, watching 146 garment workers die in a blaze caused by locked exit doors, an experience that shaped her lifelong commitment to worker safety. As Labor Secretary, she drafted the Social Security Act of 1935, established the first federal minimum wage, created unemployment insurance, banned child labor in interstate commerce, and defined the forty-hour work week. She also chaired the committee that designed the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Her achievements shaped the American social safety net more than any single official other than Roosevelt himself, yet her contributions were systematically minimized during her lifetime because of her gender.