Pink Suite or... Pink Collar?

I subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and thoroughly enjoy the eclectic mix of articles within each issue.  Recently, I read a profile of Lucy Jones, who is one of the foremost seismologists in the world today.  Lucy is 57 years old and grew up during the 50’s and 60’s when girls weren’t expected to pursue a career, let alone one in the sciences.  Lucy aced her high school science aptitude test, and her high school counselor accused her of cheating. In a quote from the article, the counselor stated, “Girls don’t get those kind of scores.”  Really?! Further, one of her other teachers suggested that she attend Harvard because “they have a better class of men to marry.”  She chose Brown and studied physics and Chinese but took a geology course during her senior year… the rest is history.   Jones eventually obtained a PhD in geophysics from MIT.  I guess “girls” can do well in science, what do you think?

In reading her story, I was reminded of an interesting story involving a colleague of mine – Dr. Janet Solomon.  Janet is a professor, a published author, an expert on financial planning and management.  Yet, in finding her way into a challenging and fulfilling career, she dealt with bias and obstacles similar to Lucy Jones. 

Janet’s Story

“I was a liberal arts student majoring in Germanic languages at Syracuse University in the 1960’s, but I had grown up the daughter of an economist and had heard economic and financial discussion at the dinner table all my life.  After my academic advisor insisted a girl was not eligible for admission to the business school, she forced me into an education minor so I would have a career if I didn’t get married and needed one (!).  My intention had been to use the languages to work at the U.N. or travel around the globe.

Despite her advice, I enrolled in the only two business courses that would accept a liberal arts student: economics and marketing.  While all the male business students struggled with the material, I enjoyed the course immensely and earned an A grade.  Although I also thoroughly enjoyed the first half of the marketing course, when the professor returned the graded mid-term exams and I got an A, he commented: “J. Stern is a girl?  A girl got an A?  I won’t let that happen again.” Then he turned to the entire class and said, “I don’t know why they let girls into these classes anyway.  They just take up space that belongs to the boys who will use their education.”  Turning back to me, he added, “From now on, you will sit in the last row, and I don’t want to hear a single word from you for the rest of the semester.”  I got a C for the course, as did the only other two girls in the class.  It really didn’t matter what we did on our papers and final exams.

After many years working in business, in 1973 I decided to go for my MBA degree. Not sure whether I wanted to major in marketing or industrial relations, I decided to visit the lead professors in each of these fields.  The marketing professor suggested that women might not be well suited for business and since I was married, I would probably be starting a family, so an MBA degree might not be as useful to me as perhaps a degree in home economics! 

Six years later, at a different university in a more sophisticated city, I discovered not much had changed when I decided to get a doctoral degree.  By 1979, I had acquired the MBA in labor relations and made the transition from industry to academia.  Once more I visited the lead professors in marketing and human resources.  This time the marketing guru wanted to know what exactly I was willing to do about his loneliness in order to get my Ph.D. in marketing?  His expectations were clear as his eyes traveled anywhere over my body except my face.  Now I was a few years older and wiser, so I responded that I would have to confer with my husband, who was a lawyer and a professor at the law school of the same university.  Would the marketing professor like to meet him?   There is nothing as sweet as a great comeback. I got the Ph.D. in human resources and labor economics, but what is it about marketing professors? “

Now, you might be tempted to say, “Okay, that was then but in today’s world, we women don’t have that type of bias to deal with.”  I say, don’t be too sure. 

Need I remind you of the famous Larry Summers debacle?  In January 2005, Larry Summers, at the time the President of Harvard University, gave a controversial lunch time speech to a group of Harvard faculty members on the topic of why there were few female professors in the science and engineering fields. He suggested that it was attributable to a "different availability of aptitude at the high end" between men and women, rather than patterns of discrimination or socialization. 

The good news:  the backlash was immediate and severe.  Larry Summers ended up with a “no confidence” vote by his Harvard colleagues and resigned from his position in 2006.  The bad news:  he publicly stated what I suspect many men and, dare I say, some women in positions of influence throughout our society – that is, academics, corporate and government leaders, legislators, etc., privately believe:  most women do best as “pink-collar” workers.  Give us a classroom of kids to teach and we’ll excel, offer us a job at a hair salon and we’ll make you look beautiful, put us on a talk show and we can gab with the best of them… just don’t ask us to understand the derivatives market or predict earthquake patterns, or discover a new medical protocol.  We just don’t have the intellect for that type of left-brain thinking. 

Is there any truth to the bias?  How do we break this pattern of belief that influences women from childhood on up?  What do you think?