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Where We Stand
Over a two-day period, more than 300 women gathered to consider the role of gender in scholarship, the arts, business, entrepreneurship—and at Yale.
December 2001
by Bruce Fellman

When Nancy Cott, Sterling Professor of History, was reviewing the initial plans for Yale’s Tercentennial celebration, she was struck by what seemed to be more than a minor oversight. “The University’s 300th anniversary also marked 30 years of coeducation,” says Cott, “but in the list of proposed programs, the role of women had been neglected.”

Some observers—particularly alumnae with long memories of the less-than-halcyon early days of coeducation at the College—would see the omission as a depressing sign of how little things had changed. But the official response to the gap suggests that Yale is no longer a place whose mission once was, said one alumna, “to produce 1,000 male leaders—and 250 bitchy wives.”

Cott, a faculty member since 1975 (she is joining the Harvard faculty next year), mentioned the oversight to University secretary and vice president Linda Koch Lorimer, who headed the Tercentennial planning committee, and the situation was quickly rectified. Together with Dolores Hayden, professor of architecture and urbanism, and Judith Resnik, the Arthur Liman Professor of Law, Cott assembled a group known as the Women Faculty Forum. The 23-member WFF developed several programs for the Tercentennial, and as the year-long series of events neared its finale in October, the group, despite the events of September 11, decided to go ahead with its most ambitious effort, a symposium, September 20 to 21, called “Gender Matters.”

The two-day conference, attended by more than 300 women—and a handful of men—celebrated the achievements of alumnae in academia, business, the arts, leadership, and entrepreneurial activities. Speakers—from university presidents to film producers—and attendees also considered the role that gender plays in changing the nature of scholarship, activism, the judiciary, and numerous other endeavors in which women are now increasingly important players.

In his opening remarks to the group, President Levin admitted that “Yale’s history is one in which women have played a limited role.” But, said Levin, “we’ve made a lot of progress in the last tenth of our history, and the numbers on Maya Lin’s Women’s Table have become less and less embarrassing.”

Statistics bear out the President’s optimistic assessment. Ever since the College admitted the first 250 female students in 1969, the number of women undergraduates has steadily increased to the point that in recent years, each entering class has had close to a 50-50 male-female ratio. The enrollments at the Graduate School and in many of Yale’s professional schools are also approaching parity.

Women have made great strides in their representation on the faculty since Bessy Lee Gambrill became a professor of education in 1923—the first female to be appointed—and was granted tenure in the early 1950s, also a first. The professoriate is now 34 percent female, and while that has increased in recent years, there is also clearly room for improvement. As of this year, women made up only 17 percent of the tenured faculty. “We’ve traveled a long distance—that shouldn’t be forgotten,” says Cott, “but there’s still a lot of work to be done.”

Academia has become a leading laboratory for developing strategies to move beyond merely assimilating women into the organizational ranks to changing the institution to enable women to flourish. At the opening panel discussion, “Women and Universities,” Johnnetta Cole, president emerita of Spelman College, Nannerl O. Keohane '67PhD, president of Duke University, and Nancy J. Vickers '76PhD, president of Bryn Mawr College, discussed how the schools they’ve led, worked for, and attended have helped, and hindered, women.

Keohane began her talk by taking the Yale Alumni Magazine’s Tercentennial issue (Mar. 2001) to task for what she perceived as its lack of attention to female accomplishments. “Symbolism matters,” said Keohane, pointing to Wellesley, a single-sex college in which many public spaces are filled with portraits that honor women. “Institutional iconography slips into your psyche.”

But while Yale’s founders, and many of its luminaries, are male, the University’s record in appointing women to the highest offices offers plenty of female role models. In addition to the secretary of the University, the positions of provost, dean of the Graduate School, and University general counsel are all occupied by women.

They are, however, all white women, and if females in general are still “mis- and underrepresented,” says Johnnetta Cole, who is also professor emerita of anthopology at Emory University, the situation is worse for minorities. “Women of color experience even greater inequalities,” she notes. “A puzzle is not done when one large piece is in place.”

Cole cautioned her audience to avoid the assumption that there was a “one-size-fits-all” solution to the problem of gender discrimination. “Though we don’t want to ignore our common experiences, if you have seen one woman, you have not seen us all,” she says.

Universities, often ahead of society, have come to see diversity as a strength. “The more eyes there are, the more complete our collective vision,” notes Cole.

Nowhere has this been more true than in scholarship, where the influx of female teachers and researchers has changed many disciplines in fundamental ways. In a panel discussion called “Invention: New Research Questions,” Seyla Benhabib '77PhD, the Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy, Maxine F. Singer '57PhD, biochemist and president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and Alice Eagly, professor of psychology at Northwestern, noted how both questions and answers can differ, depending on the gender of the scholar.

One of the best examples of this situation, said Eagly, who studies the role of gender in attitudes and leadership, comes from UCLA psychologist Shelley Taylor '72PhD, who offers a new way of looking at how people react to stressful situations. “The 'fight or flight' model is the traditional way of describing our response to danger,” said Eagly, “but Taylor has found that among women, the response is better described as 'tend and befriend.' Women, because they bear and nurture children, typically turn to others, particularly other women, to help them survive.”

As researchers from anthopology to medicine have discovered, seeing the world through male eyes alone can provide an incomplete picture of reality. But while the questions women will pose may be quite different from those of men, “gender doesn’t matter in terms of answers, if the answer’s going to hold up scientifically,” noted biochemist and science administrator Maxine Singer.

But gender continues to matter in terms of what questions get funded. “This ultimately involves issues of critical mass and the governance of science,” said Singer. “How do you get more women to go into and stay in scientific careers and move up the ranks into decision-making positions?”

It is a question that can be asked of almost any endeavor. In “Imagination: Center of the Arts,” panelist Sarah Pillsbury ’74, a film producer whose credits include Desperately Seeking Susan, How to Make an American Quilt, and Eight Men Out, explained that she got into the production track “because of gender—I heard that women could never be directors because they'd never been captains of ships. Producing came naturally, since I had all these den mothers as role models.”

For novelist Gloria Naylor '83MA, the African American author of The Women of Brewster Place and other novels, the impetus to write came from reading. “I had an intellectual and spiritual hunger for books about people who looked like me by people who looked like me,” said Naylor. “Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye gave me the courage to try to tell my story.”

In discussions on “Leadership: Reinventing the Local and the Global,” and “Founders, Entrepreneurs, and Activists,” panelists noted the challenges they'd overcome, and those that remained. There was talk about acquiring venture capital, and succeeding in various endeavors. And there was the enduring question of children and child care.

Marian Wright Edelman '63LLB, president and founder of the Washington, D.C.-based Children’s Defense Fund, urged her audience to lobby for passage of a federal bill called the Act to Leave No Child Behind. “Sojourner Truth declared that enough fleas biting strategically can make even the biggest dogs move,” said Edelman. “To change things, we need a massive flea corps.”

Linda Mason '80MBA, chairman and founder of Bright Horizons Family Solutions, explained how she'd turned the traditional childcare role of women into a national business that provides daycare for corporations. “Our corporate culture draws on the best of women’s distinctly collaborative leadership and management style, “ said Mason.

However family friendly Mason’s organization makes life at some companies, most women are still left with the difficult task of balancing home and career. “I was helping my daughters get ready to go apple picking when the phone rang and it was a colleague asking me to go to a meeting,” said Elizabeth Dillon, assistant professor of English and a member of the Women’s Faculty Forum. In an ensuing commotion, both the phone and Dillon tumbled down the stairs. “I’m often in danger of dropping balls—or phones—and I’d like to think that children and an academic career are not mutually exclusive,” said Dillon.

“It needs to be possible,” responded President Levin, outlining Yale’s efforts, which include extending the tenure clock, expanding parental leave to care for children and elderly parents, and offering subsidized daycare. “There’s been a profound demographic shift toward the two-career family, and the University must take the lead in effecting social change.”

The Women Faculty Forum would seem an ideal organization to examine these issues, and Yale has recently provided the WFF with funding for three years to continue its work beyond the Tercentennial. Says Nancy Cott: “We’ve become the seedbed for thinking about what we can do to move the University towards gender parity.”  

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