Myra Strober and John Donahoe
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262034388
- eISBN:
- 9780262332095
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262034388.003.0006
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Public and Welfare
This chapter begins where Chapter 1 ends. I portray myself teaching my first course on women and work, and the course’s contribution to my growing understanding that women’s economic disadvantages ...
More
This chapter begins where Chapter 1 ends. I portray myself teaching my first course on women and work, and the course’s contribution to my growing understanding that women’s economic disadvantages can be contested only by understanding their roles in the larger society, that studying women at work requires studying family life as well as the ways in which societal norms are created and transformed. I also discuss my education on the differences between liberal and radical feminism, and Carol Jacklin’s lecture on her work on sex differences in children. Jacklin argues that such sex differences are nota cause of occupational segregation. The scene then shifts to my life as wife and mother, including my struggle to run my daughter Liz’s playgroup for two-year-olds because I want to be a “good mom.”
I’m invited to be one of the nine original members of the first Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession (CSWEP), and accept the invitation despite my husband’s opposition. Sisterhood plays an interesting and unexpected role in my becoming one of the first two women faculty members at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business (the GSB), but the power of the law is also a potent factor: Stanford is fearful that, like Berkeley, it will face a Labor Department investigation if it doesn’t begin hiring women into its many all male departments.Less
This chapter begins where Chapter 1 ends. I portray myself teaching my first course on women and work, and the course’s contribution to my growing understanding that women’s economic disadvantages can be contested only by understanding their roles in the larger society, that studying women at work requires studying family life as well as the ways in which societal norms are created and transformed. I also discuss my education on the differences between liberal and radical feminism, and Carol Jacklin’s lecture on her work on sex differences in children. Jacklin argues that such sex differences are nota cause of occupational segregation. The scene then shifts to my life as wife and mother, including my struggle to run my daughter Liz’s playgroup for two-year-olds because I want to be a “good mom.”
I’m invited to be one of the nine original members of the first Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession (CSWEP), and accept the invitation despite my husband’s opposition. Sisterhood plays an interesting and unexpected role in my becoming one of the first two women faculty members at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business (the GSB), but the power of the law is also a potent factor: Stanford is fearful that, like Berkeley, it will face a Labor Department investigation if it doesn’t begin hiring women into its many all male departments.
