editors: laura Berman howard brick contributing editors: dan borus mary long Sunduy inside: mcagazine page four-books page five- reflections on scroog e Number 13 Page Three Decem FEATUF ber 8, 1974 tES Women pro fs: Now accepted but n By LAURA BERMAN IN 1964, two years after she be- came the only woman member of the Anthropology department, Norma Diamond delivered the op- ening lecture to one of the intro- ductory classes. A mammoth class, the lecture went without a hitch and a male student came up to her at the end. "I would never have signed up for this course," he said with a good measure of disgust, "if I had known it was going to be taught by a woman." Ten years have passed. ,Women professors are still something of a novelty. It is conceivable that a student in LSA could attend school here for four years and never have to confront the sight of a woman at the podium. But it is doubtful that any student today would re- act with the same antipathyias that student did to Norma Dia- mond. ten years ago. In the past decade, three more women have joined the Anthro department and similar "adjustments" have been made in many other departments, although not in all, and not to the extent promised when the Univer- sity committed itself to an affirm- ative action program in 1972 (see box). "In the last few years," Diamond says drily," some women have been hired, others have been given ten- ure, some have received long over- due promotions. But nothing has come close to what the expecta- tions are. The end result is not terribly exciting." HERE HAVE BEEN other ad-. vances. The Women's Studies program was launched a few years back and is thriving. The affirma- tive action program has corrected most of the inequities in salary levels. And women faculty mem- bers are represented on virtually every administrative committee - a policy - making role they were completely excluded from just a few years back. But for all the ad- vances, the academic community remains a decidedly male world: women are invited to serve on com- mittees but the committees are usually chaired by men, women are appointed to professorial positions in departments headed by men. They are not exactly invaders but neither are they fully accepted members of the gang. "When the boys get together to go drinking, they don't ask us to come along," says Peg Lourie, an assistant pro- fessor of English and chairwoman tyet p of the Women's Studies program. Even the women who defend their particular departments as fair and non-discriminatory have some "horror stories" from the past. Marilyn Young, an associate pro- fessor of history who teaches at the Residential College, recalls a cock- tail party at Dartmouth College ("Dartmouth was the most misogy- nist place one can imagine. You were who your husband was."). She was introduced as "a person in her own right" because she was a Ph.D. "As if I wouldn't have been a per- son in my own right had I never completed my dissertation," she observes. But she also says that nothing similar has ever happen- ed to her here. It has to others. 9 rt of th a male world," Diamond says, "male colleagues are hesitant to be too friendly to women profes- sors. They can't treat us like we're one of the boys. And as a conse- quence, women faculty are cut out from the social life - parties com- prised mostly of male academics and their wives." The woman aca- demic has no place in the Univer- sity's social life, especially if she is a single woman - it is too easy for any social contact to be mis- construed. The sexual element is always there. As a result, the women tend to band together. Male academics know the people in their depart- ment and in related fields; the women know other women. But even female gatherings provoke "The Fifties was one of the most godawful periods in American history," says Anthropol- ogy professor Norma Diamond. "When I was an undergrad all the women were dropping out in their junior year because they were en- gaged to guys who were graduating. And in grad school, most of the other women grads were majoring in h o m e economics. Every- where I turned I was surrounded by people baking chocolate cakes." :: r: :" e.'.r u .Y._:{.}:{"i:"}}:-}{.; . p :.}""}: y...... ... ".._ % ?i d?..,?:" . . . ..}}; .. .'p -y...-................... .? ":{q .v. :......e:.. .}: 1 :::::.:::. . ....::. 6 r i:f.::' . ,:. ..r.:p ....... e gang grad school, most of the other wo- men there seemed to be majoring in home economics. So everywhere I turned I was surrounded by peo- ple baking chocolate cakes. It was weird." IN DEFIANCE OF the American law of progress, the '40's seem to have been a much more toler- ant era: the intense social pres- sures that surfaced in the '50's came only when the soldiers re- turned. Neither Lorraine Nadel- man, an associate professor of psychology, nor Harriet Mills, a professor of Chinese studies, both of whom were educated in the '40's, felt frustrated by the times. Nadelman postponed marriage, Mills has never married, Marilyn Young let marriage interfere with a cereer for a time. Women in aca- demia are faced with some hard decisions few women and even few- er men ever have to make. The choices - remain single, compro- mise a career by putting family first, compromise a rewarding home life in return for a success- ful career. If a husband is offered a job at another University, does the wife follow, even if there is no job waiting for her? The optimum may still be a balance between home and career, but how does one achieve it? "I am aware of what you have to give up to make it," says Nadelman. "I think anybody who tries to juggle several roles finds that time becomes a very valuable commodity; and certain things just have to give. You find that household chores come last_- that you can't have the kind of house you grew up in where it was clean enough to eat off the floor." She has shared the responsibili- ty for her three children with her husband, a professor at Dearborn, but she also took seven years off when her children were small. And Nadelman's lifestyle, while not strictly traditional, is certainly more conventional than the ar- rangements other women have had to work out. Susan Chipman, a visiting assist-, ant professor in Psychology, is married although her husband is teaching in Colorado. "Since I was very young, I knew that I wanted to have a career, a demanding ca- reer. And I always knew I would have to face these kinds of ques- tions." "I REALIZE it is going to be very difficult to find jobs for both Norma Diamond LOURIE TELLS OF one woman student who applied to the University's E n g l i s h gradu- ate school in the mid-Sixties and was thoroughly grilled by the chairman. "You don't really want a Ph.D., do you?" the chairman (now retired) asked: "I know you're just looking for a husband and tht chance to settle down and have babies." Most of these tales have been dredged up from the past; there has been a gradual recognition on the part of the faculty that women have been excluded and it is now time to make amends. "I think the men have learned a great deal," says Diamond, "or at least they are more aware of what they say aloud, they are more cautious about making denigrating remarks." It is not so much a matter of being in- sulted, women professors say, as it is of being ignored or overlooked or distrusted. "Since this is so overwhelmingly some suspicion, says Lourie. "Some- times, the women of the English department will be sitting in the lounge talking and male faculty members will peer in suspiciously -checking up, I think, in case we're hatching a conspiracy." BUT MANY OF the women pro- fessors here began their ca- reers in a climate much more hos- tile to ambitious, intellectual wo- men than the one that exists to- day. They went to school in the '40's and '50's and early '60's when the academic world outside the confines of women's colleges was almost totally dominated by men. They were forced to make choices -bout their roles as women in a society that fully accepted women in one role only: that of wife and mother. In times less accepting than these, they have overcome so- cietal stereotypes to pursue an academic career; they have over- come discrimination barriers to get jobs (although Peg Lourie was hired a few years ago because she is a woman). And yet they are a disparate group. Some were seemingly born with feminist consciousnesses while others never gave the matter of their sex much thought until the women's movement emerged. Still others recognized that being a wo- man meant following a different code of behavior and they accept- ed it. Marilyn Young belongs in the latter category. As a student at Vassar and later at Harvard in the '50's, she never questioned the role assigned her. "For a women it was just harder," she gays. It was a time when people were talking about "creative motherhood," the baby boom - there was no ques- ~ tion of becoming a wife and moth- er. It was what you did." FOR YOUNG THAT meant sever- al years when she was unable to teach because she was not of- fered a job at Dartmouth where her husband, history professor Er- nest Young, had accepted a posi- tion. But it was her husband who spurred her to revive her career. He took the job here because she could work as well, but "I was re- of us in the same place. And al- though my relationship with my husband is a good one, the satisfac- tion to be obtained from it, for me, is not as important as the satisfaction I get from solving in- tellectual puzzles. So I am .not at all sure about what is going to happen." Diamond's husband works at the United Nations in New York; they can afford to see each other once a month when they are both work- ing; between both of their vaca- tions, they can piece together an- other five months. "It's been diffi- cult, but we get a lot of work done this way," she says with a smile. Marilyn Young's teaching career ground to a halt when she first married, and it wasn't until she had someone to take care of her children that she was able to do the work necessary to complete her first book. And it wasn't until the women's movement emerged in the late '60's that she began to conscious- ly question the assumptions she held about women's status. The women's movement had a power- ful effect on the academic com- munity here: on the administra- tive policy, male attitudes and on the women themselves. Many ,of the women interviewed for this ar- ticle have, at one time or another, been involved in consciousness raising groups. They all acknowl- edge that the women's movement has made them more conscious of the problems and kinds of discrim- ination women have faced in the past. It also has made them aware of their position as role models for women students. YOUNG RECALLS a lecture she gave for an LSA class in the early 70's. At the end of the lec- ture, a group of women students crowded around her to thank her because they had never seen a wo- man lecture before. "It is not an utterly male world any more," she says. "Things have changed." Di- amond sees the changes somewhat differently. "Not many years ago, there were very few people who took women professors seriously," she says. "Now at least the women do." Affirmative action a t U' WHILE WOMEN have made significant inroads into professorial ranks at the University in the past few years, they are still far from gaining representation on the faculty in proportion to their at-large population. Women faculty members comprise 13.83 per cent of the total faculty, an increase of only two- tenths of a per cent from the year before. The number of tenured women on the faculty is even more dispro- portionate - just 10.75 per cent of the tenured faculty. Two years ago, the University committed itself to an affirmative action program that set a goal of 54 additional women on the instructional staff by the end of the 1975-76 school year. But the Uni- versity's budgetary problems coupled with the re- luctance of some departments to recruit women make it unlikely that the mark will be reached by that date. "I'M DISAPPOINTED at the effort that is being put forth," says Dr. Nellie Varner, director of affirmative action programs. "At the pace we're going now, we will not reach our projected goals. Assuming future years are no better than this year, we should reach only about half that number." For the most part, the success of the affirma- tive action program rests with individual depart- ment heads. Various departments have complied The greatest concentration of women can be found in traditionally "women's fields." The Eng- lish department has 13 female faculty members at the instructor level or above; Phychology has 19. ;.. _ .