The dean’s assistant confirmed them into his convention room. Nancy had all the time been curious to see it; this was the place the Science Council argued over tenure selections. It was a stately room, with excessive ceilings and wooden paneling. Nancy’s eyes went to the lengthy polished-wood desk that dominated the room. She considered the opening scene of The Girls within the Balcony, which described when the newly fashioned Women’s Caucus of the New York Timesmet with the writer and different males of the newspaper’s masthead throughout a 25-foot desk, an stubborn, gleaming mahogany image of the 121-year-old establishment the ladies had been difficult. To the journalists within the ebook, it had appeared overpowering, “to go on as long as the eye could see.” This desk was smaller, Nancy thought, however no much less daunting.
Someone had set out comfortable drinks, espresso, and cookies on a credenza subsequent to the desk. Above it was a big {photograph}, and Nancy might see that the opposite girls’s eyes had fastened on that. It was an image of Robert Birgeneau, dean of the School of Science, and the college’s 5 division heads. They had been all males, as division heads had all the time been, and all grinning. One was carrying a tuxedo. They had been holding their forefingers aloft to say, “We’re number one!” Suddenly all Nancy might see of the room was the {photograph}. She felt sick. This had all been a foul concept. She remembered what Penny had stated all summer time: “We’re not even on their radar screen.”
The girls had spent the previous month meticulously getting ready a proposal for the dean, asking him to kind a committee to look at the info on house, salaries, assets, and instructing assignments to guarantee that girls had been being handled pretty in contrast with males. The committee would meet with every girl on the school every year to find out any issues, after which advocate methods the dean might resolve them. Only 17 of the School of Science’s 214 tenured college had been girls. Sixteen of them had signed a letter—well mannered, conciliatory, collaborative in tone—accompanying the proposal to the dean.
“We believe that discrimination becomes less likely when women are viewed as powerful, rather than weak, as valued, rather than tolerated by the Institute. The heart of the problem is that equal talent and accomplishment are viewed as unequal when seen through the eyes of prejudice.”
“There is a widespread perception among women faculty that there is consistent, though largely unconscious, gender discrimination within the Institute,” they wrote. “We believe that unequal treatment of women who come to MIT makes it more difficult for them to succeed, causes them to be accorded less recognition when they do, and contributes so substantially to a poor quality of life that these women can actually become negative role models for younger women. We believe that discrimination becomes less likely when women are viewed as powerful, rather than weak, as valued, rather than tolerated by the Institute. The heart of the problem is that equal talent and accomplishment are viewed as unequal when seen through the eyes of prejudice. If the Institute more visibly demonstrates that it views women as valuable, a more realistic view of their ability and accomplishments by their administrators, colleagues, and staff will ultimately follow.”
They had apprehensive over each element, met in secret, and shredded early drafts, scared of being discovered as activists or, worse, radicals. They assumed the dean would have already alerted the Institute’s attorneys.
But Penny was proper. When Bob Birgeneau walked into his convention room for his three o’clock that afternoon, he didn’t even know what the assembly was about. He hadn’t learn the letter or the proposal the ladies had so rigorously written, shredded, and rewritten over the earlier month. He was simply again from Brookhaven National Lab, on Long Island, the place he spent the higher a part of each summer time operating experiments on neutron scattering within the High Flux Beam Reactor. He had spent his early profession avoiding administrative jobs, and whereas he appreciated his function as dean, he most well-liked being within the lab, particularly at Brookhaven, the place he did his personal analysis with out postdocs or graduate college students to handle. He had returned recharged, as he all the time did. To the six girls who sat ready for him, he confirmed an image of confidence and ease, a late-summer tan, and a broad smile.
MIT MUSEUM
If he needed to, Birgeneau would have guessed they had been there to speak a few dispute he knew effectively: the earlier spring, Nancy had come to see him about having been faraway from instructing the introductory biology course she’d developed, regardless of having earned excessive rankings from college students. Instead, Nancy defined how that they had come collectively over the summer time, stated that they wished to work with the college, and defined their concept for the ladies’s committee. She had typed out notes, understanding she’d have hassle maintaining her nerves in verify. In daring she’d typed: “Progress at universities comes when committed faculty meet up with a committed administration. Opportunity exists now at MIT to do something important about this very important problem.”
The girls went across the convention desk, beginning with Sylvia, then JoAnne. They described the arc of their careers: how optimistic they’d felt coming to MIT, solely to finish up feeling remoted, ignored, pissed off over assets. Lisa talked about salaries, relating how some girls realized they’d been underpaid solely after they obtained sudden raises. The girls had recognized once they selected careers in science that they must make sacrifices of their private lives, however that they had not anticipated to be paid lower than their male colleagues. None of the ladies within the room had kids, Nancy advised him: “They aren’t even married.”