Swarthmore College Alumni Bulletin 1985-11-01

November 1985

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Women’s Rights: Unfinished Business

Psychologist Carol Gilligan ’58
and the “New Feminism”
Student video combats “date rape”
A silly old Swarthmore song... and sex
Nine alumnae discuss the “pitfalls
and potential of being a woman”
W hat ever happened to the women of ’62?

Women’s Rights: Unfinished Business

Psychologist Carol Gilligan ’58 and

T he N ew Fem inism
By Larry L. Elveru
It would have been unthinkable in the early ’70s, an era of feminist
polemics aimed at eradicating sexual differences. Even a decade
later it smacked of heresy to some when Ms. magazine named as its
first “Woman of the Year” the author of a book describing the
tendency of men and women to develop different moral per­
spectives.
In answering charges that her book, In a Different Voice:
Psychological Theory and Women’s Development, may lend new
credence to old sexual stereotypes, Harvard University psychol­
ogist Carol Friedman Gilligan ’58 (Hon. ’85) emphasizes: “I am
talking about things that are not innate differences between men
and women. I am saying that pyschology can learn something from
women and that some of what we can learn from women would be
applicable to both men’s and women’s behavior.”
Gilligan’s suggestion that men could benefit by studying female
behavior echoes the sentiments of longtime women’s rights activist
Alice Paul ’05. Paul maintained that “women are the peace-loving,
constructive half of the world and men are the aggressive, fighting
part.” When asked her opinion of Paul’s characterizations of the
sexes, Gilligan says she both agrees and disagrees.
“It’s overstating things to say that women are peaceful and men
are violent. Obviously that’s a stereotype,” Gilligan says. “Women
are not only peaceful and men are not only violent___As a
psychologist I would ask: ‘Why do women seem to resort to
violence less often than men? Why is there less violence in
women’s lives?’ Those are clear empirical observations with
extremely interesting implications.
“The gist of my work is to ask why psychologists haven’t been
more curious about these aspects of women’s lives, which could be
very valuable, particularly at this moment in history. I also want to
know why women generally have gone along with the devaluing of
themselves and their ideas and with attempts to keep them out of
public life as if they don t have anything to add, when it seems so
clear that they do.”
Gilligan’s book persuasively argues that women tend to develop
a different moral voice than men—one that stresses interdepend­
ence and an ethic of care,” rather than independence and “an
ethic of rights.”
Gilligan theorizes that these contrasting moral outlooks reflect
differences in how children perceive their mothers. Drawing on the
work of sociologist Nancy Chodorow and psychoanalyst Jean
Baker Miller, she observes that girls generally identify with their

mothers and in that way develop a strong sense for the feelings and
needs of others. Boys, on the other hand, usually see themselves as
increasingly autonomous from their mothers and gain their
identities through individual accomplishments. Consequently,
males often feel threatened by intimacy, Gilligan says, while
females are inclined to feel threatened by separation, since their
identities are more strongly tied to personal relationships.
Gilligan conducted a series of studies of female and male moral
development from childhood through college and beyond. Her
research draws heavily on searching personal interviews with
individuals faced with hypothethical and real moral dilemmas,
including twenty-nine women ranging in age from 15 to 33, some
single and some married, who were considering having abortions.
Gilligan skillfully synthesizes her research findings with a thorough
re-evaluation of established psychological theories of moral
development.
“There’s been concern among feminists that my work would be
used to rationalize a resurrection or continuation of repressive
treatment of women,” Gilligan acknowledges. “I think that’s a
legitimate concern, she says, “and I deplore any use of my work
for that purpose.”
^ In their January 1984 cover story naming Gilligan as their first
Woman of the Year, the editors of Ms. wrote: “Gilligan’s work
has created a new appreciation for a previously uncatalogued
female sensibility, as well as possibilities for new understanding
between the genders. But her contributions go beyond these.
Because we live in a world where our survival may depend on our
sense of connection, Gilligan’s work has implications for a rather
different kind of future—one in which humanity takes its cues not
from Big Brother, but from sisters, mothers, and daughters.”
Gilligan says she was pleased with the recognition given to her
work by Ms. I wanted to join with others in the women’s
movement who want to focus on values, especially as they relate to
peace and nuclear war and modes of conflict resolution that don’t
end in violence. I supported Ms. in bringing those issues to the
center of the women’s movement.”
In the wake of that surge of national publicity, Gilligan concedes
she had some second thoughts about her high visibility. “There’s
always a backlash of sorts from any popular discussion of your
work, she says, “but I felt strongly that I should stand with other
women and speak out on public issues.”
The gender gap” on defense and social welfare issues found by
PHOTO BY BRITAIN HILL

Gilligan’s work seems to have moved
feminist ideology into a new
.

public opinion polls during the 1984 presidential election cam­
paign, coupled with Geraldine Ferraro’s nomination for vice
president, suggested that the views of women could be decisive at
the polls. Sixty-five years after winning the right to vote, women
seemed about to assume a role in public affairs commensurate with
their majority status. But neither Ferraro’s candidacy, nor the
gender gap, proved to be an important factor in the outcome of the
presidential election.
“Someone called me up on election day last year and told me
she had to talk to me before she voted,” Gilligan recalls. “ ‘I want to
vote for Mondale,’ she said, ‘but I’m afraid that if I do it will hurt
the country by conveying an image of a weaker America.’ In other
words,” Gilligan explains, “she felt that if she acted on her own
assessment of the candidates she would be doing something against
the interests of the country. That—not trusting one’s own judg­
ment—is a classic women’s position.
“We talked about her assessment of the candidates and the
issues,” Gilligan continues, “and she found that her own position,
in fact, made a lot of sense. In the end she went out and voted for
Mondale.”
The apparent readiness of women to alter their opinions when
challenged, Gilligan suggests, is a weakness that grows out of their
strong capacity for empathy. “Their interest in understanding other
people’s positions makes them more likely to weigh them against
their own views,” she points out. “The disappointment of

Moving Ms. beyond a focus on inequities
2

suffrage,” Gilligan notes in her book, “is recorded in the failure of
many women to vote and the tendency of others in voting only to
second their husbands’ opinions___”
Despite her long-standing interest in the women’s movement,
Gilligan’s focus in her work on women’s moral development came
about somewhat serendipitously. “I was interested in doing a study
in the early ’70s of how people think about real decisions with
personal consequences,” she recalls. “Originally I set out to study
how Harvard students were dealing with the draft during the
Vietnam War, and then Nixon ended the draft and that was that.
But then [in 1973] the Supreme Court legalized abortion.
“It’s very difficult to find an ideal situation like that to study
people actually facing a decision, and where they come to some
public place so you can ask them about it,” Gilligan points out. “I
was doing a study of how people think about real decisions, of the
relationship between judgment and action. I was not even
conscious that it would be interesting to examine a group of
women alone. That was not on my mind. The sex difference issue
was not what I was looking for at all.
“I think the reason that the abortion study was so revealing,
though,” Gilligan says, “was that the issue of taking responsibility
for choice was so focused on the question of how women respond
to conflicts of responsibility in relationships.” When trying to
decide whether or not to have an abortion, women often feel
“caught between selfishness and responsibility, unable to find in
the circumstances of this choice a way of caring that does not at the
same time destroy,” Gilligan writes. In such a situation—especially
if they feel abandoned by their lovers or that they are hurting their
parents—women may become preoccupied with personal survival
or even nihilistic. But such a crisis, Gilligan found, also can lead to a
more mature moral vision.
In her book Gilligan describes the insight that allowed one
woman to adopt a broader moral perspective: “Sarah, a twentyfive-year-old . . . , finds a way to reconcile the initially disparate
concepts of selfishness and responsibility through a transformed
understanding of relationships. Examining the assumptions under­
lying the conventions of female self-abnegation and moral selfsacrifice, she rejects these conventions as immoral in their power to
hurt. By elevating nonviolence, the injunction against hurting, to a
principle governing all moral judgments and action, she is able to
assert a moral equality between self and other and to include both
in the compass of care. Care then becomes a universal injunction, a
self-chosen ethic which, freed from its conventional interpretation,
leads to a recasting of the dilemma in a way that allows the
assumption of responsibility for choice.”
Gilligan calls this higher level of women’s moral development
an awareness of “truth and interdependence.” At this stage of
maturity women differentiate between helping others and pleasing
them, and include themselves among those for whom it is moral to
care.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

While helping transform developmental psychology, Gilligan’s
work also seems to have moved feminist ideology into a new era.
Writing in The New Republic about a year after the publication of
In a Different Voice, Rutgers University political scientist Ben­
jamin R. Barber declared that “radical feminism as a coherent and
compelling political ideology is all but dead.” Barber went on to
identify Gilligan as a spokesperson for “third-stage feminism.”
“To simplify,” Barber explains, “feminism in its first stage
responded t o . . . domination by male archetypes by in effect de­
manding that women think like, mature like, and be like men—by
insisting that women could do what men do and be what men are.
Second-stage feminism reacted by accepting the distinctions
imposed by the male models, but by saying it’s all right to think like
a woman.. . . New feminists like Gilligan . . . accept the validity of
differences, but insist on the need to reformulate the very categories
by which differences are identified and accounted for.”
Rather than denying there are sexual differences, Barber says
that third-stage feminism implies that “the quest for justice in social
relations cannot be a search for perfect symmetry.” Gilligan and
other new feminists make it clear that “ways must be found to
preserve (or create) political and economic equality in the face of
differing social roles, distinctive gender needs, and contrasting, if
(ideally) complementary, approaches to moral development and
reasoning,” Barber argues.
The powerful appeal of Gilligan’s “new feminism” has made her
book a best seller for the Harvard University Press ever since its
publication in May 1982. Over 200,000 copies are now in print—
an exceptionally large number for a book originally envisioned as
an academic treatise. Harvard Press initially published just 3,000
copies.
“We had no idea there would be such an overwhelming
response,” Gilligan says, noting that she has received far more mail
from readers than she can possibly answer. “What came up mostly
in the letters I have received from men,” she says, “was that my
book had explained something to them that had been a source of
bafflement or misunderstanding in their relationships with women
—that it had clarified some impassioned conversation that they
didn’t understand, for example. Business and professional women
and men wrote that they had come up against similar problems in
their work. For example, many doctors said the book led them to
think differently about things that their patients were saying to
them.”
Gilligan’s major research efforts now are devoted to detailed
study of adolescent moral development. “I started at an all-girls
school and did a four-year study of girls in their high school years.
It seems to me that these years are critical in girls’ development
because it’s easy for them to become silent during this time. I am
very interested in how their thinking evolves in these years, about
themselves, their relationships, and morality.
“Each year during that study I went with fifteen women
graduate students from Harvard to interview high school girls,”
Gilligan notes. “This gave added meaning to the project.” Gilligan
now is editing and assembling the Ph.D. dissertations that grew out
of that study into a book.
“We were a group of women working together on a serious
intellectual project and it is my hope that this work will make it
easier for women to give credence to their own perceptions and
ideas and thereby do more creative work.”
The Swarthmore College Bulletin (ISSN 0884-5468), o f which this is volume
LXXXIII, number 2, is published in September, November, December, February,
May, and August by Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA 19081. Second class
postage paid at Swarthmore, PA, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send
address changes to Swarthmore College Bulletin, Swarthmore, PA 19081.
NOVEMBER 1985

Pleased to be “in the middle
of a lot of controversy”
“I didn’t see it as a political book,” Carol Friedman Gilligan
’58 says of her landmark study of women’s moral develop­
ment, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and
Women’s Development.
Ironically, while some feminists see Gilligan’s book as
reactionary because of its thesis that women tend to have a
different moral perspective from men, some traditional psy­
chologists see her work as a feminist assault on wellestablished theories of moral development first propounded
by Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson, and Lawrence
Kohlberg.
While she was a research assistant at Harvard University
in the 1960s, Gilligan worked for Kohlberg. After taking
time off to raise three sons, including Jonathan Gilligan ’82
and Timothy Gilligan ’86, she returned to Harvard. As a
developmental psychologist teaching in Harvard’s Graduate
School of Education, she is now one of Kohlberg’s
colleagues.
Gilligan points out that Kohlberg derived his well-known
six-stage hierarchy of moral development from data col­
lected from eighty-four males during a twenty-year-long
study. Male moral development thereby inadvertently
became the standard against which women often are judged
and found wanting by psychologists.
In her book, Gilligan explains that thinking about care
and responsibility is often confused with Kohlberg’s third
stage of moral development: “At this stage morality is
conceived in interpersonal terms and goodness is equated
with helping and pleasing others. This conception of
goodness is considered [by Kohlberg] functional in the lives
of mature women insofar as their lives take place in the
home___[OJnly if women enter the traditional arena of
male activity will they recognize th^ inadequacy of this
moral perspective and progress like men toward higher
stages where relationships are subordinated to rules (stage
four) and rules to universal principles of justice (stages five
and six).”
Besides being controversial among psychologists, Gilli­
gan’s book has been attacked on a broader front by
traditional social scientists.
“There is a division in psychology right now—in fact, in
all of the social sciences—about research methods,” Gilligan
explains. “There are many people who question old
assumptions about the validity of traditional research
methods and are focusing instead on issues of interpretation.
My work is very much in line with that whole movement in
psychology.
“I am looking at the value premises that underline psycho­
logical theories, values that are embedded in psychological
research and are manifest in the ways researchers relate to
their subjects. My work is part of a larger movement called
‘interpretive social science.’
“So my work is in the middle of a lot of controversy in
psychology,” Gilligan adds, “which is good. That’s what you
hope for, really.”
-Larry Elveru

3

Students combat “date rape” with
video shot on campus
Assailants usually are not strangers,
student-produced film warns
By Larry L. Elveru
Scenario I: Karen, 18, meets Paul, an upper­
classman, in her biology class. Thai night at
a campus party, after they both have had a
couple o f drinks, he asks her to dance. She
does so with obvious enthusiasm. Before he
walks her home, they stop by his dorm room
to get a sweater, and one thing quickly leads
to another:
KAREN: “Paul I don’t know i f this is the
right time right now. ”
PAUL: “Oh, it feels good, doesn’t it?
You’re beautiful ”
KAREN: “I really like you, but___”
PAUL: “Your skin is so beautiful. ”
KAREN: “I had a couple o f beers and my
mind isn’t that clear, and Stephanie’s gonna
be expecting me home. ”
PAUL: “Steph won’t miss you.’’
KAREN: “Yes, she’s going to miss me,
and, and___”
PAUL: “D on’t give me this **** Karen.
D on’t play games. ”
KAREN: “Pm not playing games with
you. I just, I don’t . . . . ”
PAUL: “What are you, some kind o f
tease? / thought you wanted to get to know
me. How else are we gonna do it?”
The videotaped scene ends with a freezefram e closeup, showing both fear and resig­
nation on Karen’s face as she vainly resists
Paul’s insistent advances.

more common than rape by a stranger.
Recent studies indicate that more than 20
percent of college women are victims of rape
or attempted rape and that most student rape
victims know their rapists. The results of
such research have encouraged officials at
many colleges, including Swarthmore, to
expand their rape-prevention efforts beyond
improving campus lighting and providing
nighttime escort services.
Beginning in the fall semester of 1983,
Swarthmore’s campus security service and
the Dean’s Office collaborated in training
resident assistants (RAs) to show a profes­
sionally produced videotape on acquaint­
ance rape and discuss it with incoming
freshmen. While most RAs thought these
discussions worthwhile, many found the
videotape, which depicted high school
dating situations, inappropriate for a college
setting. At that point one of the RAs
conceived the idea of Swarthmore students
making their own video on date rape.
Jan Boswinkel ’85, then an RA in Whar­
ton Hall, first learned how to put together a
video presentation by directing, taping, and
editing amateur documentaries when he was
a high school student in the Netherlands.
During spring semester of 1984 Boswinkel
met three times with students who were
interested in working on the project. He also
carefully researched the subject by talking to
t is not a pleasant scene, nor is it RAs, friends, and College staff and admin­
intended to be. The eight Swarthmore istrators who had had some experience in
students who wrote, produced, di­ handling the problem.
rected, edited, and acted in this video­
“From those meetings with RAs and
taped scenario want other students to re­
administrators who had dealt with such
cognize that forced sex under any circum­ situations, I came up with some possible
stances—even with a friend or acquaintance scenarios,” Boswinkel recalls. “At the same
—is rape.
time, I was involved as a resident assistant in
College counselors and psychologists following up on an incident of serious sexual
throughout the United States report that harassment. Although it wasn’t really rape in
“date rape” and “acquaintance rape” are far the legal sense, it made me more aware of

Scenario II: It begins...

as a friendly study break...

and back rub,...

I

4

then shifts abruptly from attem pted...

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

to rejected advances,...

and ends with hurt feelings...

fo r both STEVE (Serge Seiden ’85) and
LISA (Ruth Sergei ’84), but no lasting scars.
NOVEMBER 1985

With the outline for his project in mind,
Boswinkel began looking for video equip­
ment and production funds. After deter­
mining that it would be cheaper to hire a
professional to shoot and help edit the video
than to rent the equipment that would be
needed, he asked Dean Janet Dickerson for
help with financing. After hearing Boswinkel’s detailed proposal, Dickerson agreed
to underwrite the production, which was
budgeted at $2,000.
“At that point, 1 realized that although 1
had scenarios and a filmmaker lined up, I
would still need somebody who knew a little
more about acting than I did, which wasn’t a
whole lot,” Boswinkel recalls. “Jill Chaifetz
[’86] was living on my hall and she was
involved in theatre and interested in the
subject, so I asked her if she could suggest
student actors who might be interested. She
took on a lot of responsibility and helped me
recruit six actors and several other students
to help with directing and production.
“Jill got the actors together for workshops
on basic theatrical things and then went
through the scenarios a number of times
while improvising the dialogue to make it
sound natural. The shooting was done right
after classes ended that spring [1984] after
four or five days of rehearsals. It took them
only one day to do all the shooting, which is
really exceptional for this kind of produc­
tion, ” Boswinkel notes.
During the summer of ’84 Boswinkel
made several trips to New York to work on
editing with Greta Schiller, the professional
they had hired to shoot the tapes. At the end
of the summer Boswinkel invited Dean
Dickerson and several College administra­
tors, along with selected College and local
high school students, to previews of the
video. Reactions to the previews prompted
only minor editing changes, which could be
accomplished without having to reshoot any
scenes.
With the help of about a dozen RAs and
other students and the endorsement of the
Dean’s Office, Boswinkel first showed the
finished product to small groups of freshmen
during the first two weeks of classes last year.
The tapes and the discussions that precede
and follow their presentation sometimes
generated heated exchanges between stu­
dents, Boswinkel says. Dividing men and
women into separate discussion groups im­
mediately after showing the video, and then
bringing them back together, has eased
tensions a good deal.
“A lot of the people who get involved in
presenting these tapes have done a lot of
thinking about feminist issues and con­
sciousness-raising and when they go into the
residence halls they run into people from all
over the world, including some who have

very different ideas about feminist issues,”
Boswinkel explains. “But it’s good to have
your beliefs challenged now and then, in­
stead of preaching to the converted all the
time.”
The innovativeness of this student-run
rape prevention program and the profes­
sional quality of the students’ video presen­
tation has generated nationwide interest in
their efforts. Following publication of a
feature story about the program in The
Philadelphia Inquirer, which was picked up
for national distribution by the KnightRidder News Service, Boswinkel and Chai­
fetz were invited to appear on NBC’s “Today
Show” last March. During the course of the
interview, two segments of their videotape
were shown on the air.
That morning alone the Dean’s Office got
more than twenty telephone calls asking for
information about the videotape. A few
weeks later, The Chronical o f Higher
Education published an item in its “Ideas”
column advising its readers of the availa­
bility of the tape and workshop materials. To
date the Dean’s Office has received 229
requests for information about the video and
it has sold forty-two copies for use in rape
crisis centers and at other colleges and
universities, including the University of Cali­
fornia system. Orders have come from as far
away as Malaysia. By charging a fee of $200
for each tape and set of discussion materials,
the $2,300 cost of producing the tape has
been repaid several times over.
In mid-August Boswinkel and Chaifetz
were notified that they had won the 1985
Humanitarian Award in Education from the
Los Angeles Commission on Assaults
Against Women. Even more gratifying than
this award and the national notoriety, Bos­
winkel says, “is the fact that this is something
that was done by students based on their
own experiences.
“Not only that,” he adds, “it was done by
male and female students working together.
The only way we’re going to change atti­
tudes and behaviors like this is by men and
women working together.”
Sk

D eng-Jeng Lee

the acquaintance rape problem, more anx­
ious to do something about it.”
Drawing on this experience and his re­
search, Boswinkel settled on two scenarios
for the video project. “The main distinction
between the two,” he explains, “is that in the
first one the two people [KAREN and
PAUL] really don’t know each other before
they come on to one another at a party. The
scenario shows how there is very little
attempt made by either person at communi­
cating what they expect from the evening.
“In the second scenario, the two people
[STEVE and LISA] start with a comfortable
friendship and there is a confusion of signals,
for the man at least. This scenario seems
more real to some people. While there is
some aggression on his part, he is not so
much a ‘bad guy’ and she is not so much a
‘victim.’ ”

Jan Boswinkel ’85 conceived the idea fo r the
award-winning video while a Wharton H all RA.
5

Elizabeth Leavelle Bennett ’69

Women’s Rights: Unfinished Business

Nine alumnae
talk about
the “pitfalls and
potential of
being a woman”

A specialist in fam ily law fo r a Philadel­
phia law firm, Libby Bennett is a board
member fo r the Greater Philadelphia
branch o f the American Civil Liberties
Union and fo r the Domestic Abuse Project
o f Delaware County. She is the mother o f
daughters Tina and Lisa and, although it
was “somewhat difficult,”she talked about
her mother, Nancy Morgan Ponch ’44,
who recently died o f cancer.
I am a survivor. I watched my mother
suffer for years with cancer and finally die
in December. Another member of my
family has been struck with cancer. My
two daughters and I have been the victims
of crime, and I have been divorced. De­
spite all our hardships in the last five years,
we are doing well. I feel that my work has
helped me better understand the traumas
in my personal life. My divorce clients
have given me many insights into the ways
in which loss manifests itself. They also
have the endless capacity for survival that
human beings demonstrate when faced
with serious personal problems and iden­
tity crises.
My father died when I was nine and my
memory of him is fragmented. I was raised
in a matriarchal household, my strongest
attachments having been to my mother

Steven Goldblatt '67

Is there something distinctively recognizable about a
Swarthmore woman? Can you pick her out at a podium,
or in a courtroom, lab, or classroom? Given the diversity
of our students, you obviously can’t. They wear no labels,
on their shirts or in their minds. Yet isn’t there something
that binds them all—a way of thinking, an approach to
problems, an attitude toward life, perhaps, that reflects
their years at Swarthmore? To try to find out, we asked
nine alumnae, ranging from the Class of 1930 to the Class
of 1975, to share their thoughts about and experiences of
“being a woman” in the “outside” world.

6

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

Bob Wood

and grandmother, who were both single
parent heads of households. My mother
was enormously influential in my selfconcept as a woman. The past has been a
constant reminder to me of the pitfalls and
potential in being a woman.
She was raised in a Victorian household
and dominated by a father who had con­
tradictory responses to the women in his
life. I just recently learned, for example,
that my grandmother, who was a leader in
the suffragette movement in Ohio and
worked at Hull House—activities which
were appreciated by my grandfather—was>
not permitted to go outside in the daylight
when she was pregnant because my grand­
father considered the sight of a pregnant
woman unseemly. And, yet, my grand­
father was known for his liberal and pro­
gressive political leadership in the City of
Cleveland. (It is encouraging that both
men and women have evolved so far in
only two generations that similar restric­
tions on women are unfamiliar today.)
Despite the restrictions placed on
women, in my mother’s home scholarship
was encouraged. My mother’s intellectual
aspirations were reflected by her attend­
ance at Swarthmore. Like many women of
her generation, she never fulfilled all her
career ambitions; she had problems resolv­
ing the fact that she had not entered law as
her father had. I think that in many ways
I acted out the side of her personality
which sought to prove itself in the profes­
sional world of her father. She was, I
believe, both proud and jealous of my
accomplishments. I, as a result, was given
many mixed messages about my work.
On the other hand, my mother was very
positive and clear in other respects. She
had an incredible survival instinct, a lust
for life, a love of the English language,
history, and elevation of the human spirit
through creative effort. It is interesting that
my mother, whose mother died when she
was only two weeks old, was able to
convey to me an almost animal dedication
and enthusiasm for parenting. I have also
learned from the mistakes she made as a
parent; I have learned that to be a woman
is to nurture for the purpose of letting go.
I hope that my daughters will have both
families and careers. However, I hope that
they will value being a parent enough to
realize that it is worth sacrificing some
career advancement and monetary rewards
in return for taking the time to be a
mother. I hope that they will marry men
who know how to nurture themselves, as
well as my daughters, and are willing to
share in raising children, as well as to
cooperate over the little issues necessary to
make work possible for both of them.

Alice Michael with daughter Becky.

Alice M cN ees M ichael ’48
Alice Michael, Phi Beta Kappa, is an
entrepreneur who transformed her type­
setting cottage industry into a major busi­
ness venture in nearby Media, Pa. After
raising three children and serving as an
administrative assistant fo r the C.G. Jung
Foundation in New York, she returned
“home” in 1979.
It sounded like a marvelous idea. I would
make my own decisions, set my own work
hours, and be beholden to no board of
directors. So I spread my sewing cutting
board across the bed for a work area,
rented an IBM composer, and placed it
precariously on a rickety old table con­
tributed by a loyal high school chum. The
Yellow Pages provided a rich source of
printers glad to patronize a typesetter who,
in order to get started, undercut everyone
else’s prices.
After a year of rub-on letters, cans of
fixative, and other devious ways to meet
more varied typesetting demands, I in­

vested in a “real” phototypesetting
machine. Shangri-La—until business
became so overwhelming that I SOSed my
daughter Becky, who needed a part-time
job while finishing up at Widener Univer­
sity. The problems were solved, or so we
thought.
But every “final solution” seemed to
beget new problems (fortunately, those of
success). So in 1982, Becky suggested that
we form a legal partnership. When Media
Borough realized a “business” was going
on in my bedroom and on a residential
street, it evicted us pronto. We packed our
equipment, introduced Becky’s dog to new
napping quarters at 415 E. Baltimore Pike,
put up a sign, and here we are today.
And speaking of Becky, it became clear
early in her life that I would do better try­
ing to emulate her than aspire for her. On
her first day of Sunday School at age
three, when her gentle teacher tried to help
her take off her coat, Becky glared, planted
her feet, and announced “my byself!”
Michael Typography has developed a

life of its own, more demanding than the
above-mentioned board of directors. It
seems to require two office suites, one full­
time employee, five part-timers, complex
digital typesetting equipment with sundry
back-up gadgets, plus nerves of steel. But
Becky’s dog loves having her choice of
floor space and adds an air of calm to our
deadline-ridden world.
I have never felt the limitations of being
a woman so strongly as the demands. The
former I have tended to disregard by plow­
ing on, but I have trouble with the latter.
For example, leisure, defined as whiling
away the time with small talk graced by
social amenities, brings a sense of suffoca­
tion. Perhaps partly in compensation,
work has been the focus, and joy, of my
life—whether it be raising children (the
most important endeavor), studying a fas­
cinating subject, or running a business.
And what a glorious life!

Elinor Meyer Haupt ’55
Ellie Haupt has been described as a
“volunteer extraordinaire. ” In 1982 she
was named Citizen o f the Year in Somers,
N. V, where she and her fam ily have lived
fo r nearly twenty years. Ellie has served as
president o f the P. T.A., a member o f the
Parks and Recreation Board, and president
o f the Somers Library Association and the
Library Board o f Trustees. I am most
proud o f leading the fight fo r and even­
tually the building o f a new library, ” she
says. Ellie has given generously o f her time
to the College also, serving as a class
secretary, an admissions interviewer, and a
member o f the Alumni Council, and cur­
rently as vice president o f the Alumni
Association.
In the 1920’s Gertrude Stein spoke of the
Lost Generation; I believe those of us who
were women graduating in the 1950’s
were the “Mid” Generation. We started on
our independent lives in the middle of the
century, and we reflected a way of life
midway between those of the homemakers
our mothers were and the career women
our nieces and daughters are. Better edu­
cated for the most part than our mothers,
we looked upon our careers as more than
just a prelude to marriage and something
to fall back on in an emergency. Yes, we
left our jobs when our children came, but
we filled the childrearing years with com­
mitments to the League of Women Voters,
the P.T.A., and the library board. Thanks
to Swarthmore, we were too aware of the
needs of our communities not to get in­
volved. And now? Most of us are back '
to our careers in social work, research, or
teaching.

Similar sharing by couples is seen in the
division of housework and financial respon­
sibility, in marriage contracts and divorce
settlements, even in supermarket shopping.
Having been a partner in a sharing rela­
tionship, I can only view this trend as a
positive one, one which will give women
greater freedom and responsibility.

Sherry Coben ’75

Ellie Haupt

We also were midwives for a new kind
of young woman. Because of our experi­
ences and beliefs, we had the same aspi­
rations and expectations for our daughters
as for our sons. If this is the age of unisex
clothing and hairstyles, I must believe part
of the reason is that women and men grad­
uating from college know they are (or
should be) facing the same standards and
responsibilities. If they choose to marry
and have children, the responsibilities of
home management and childcare will be
more evenly divided than they ever were
before. The kind of job or career flexibil­
ities each has may well dictate which one
will cover the crisis situations in the home
when they arise. Many women today, for
example, no longer give up their jobs to
have a child; they take maternity leave. In
response to demand, corporations are insti­
tuting maternity leave for fathers, as men
today have become more involved in the
birth of the child and its first days at home.

Screenwriter Sherry Coben was born in
California, raised in New Jersey, and
found happiness in New York City, where
she lives with her husband Patrick
McMahon. A s the creator o f the hit CBS
television series “Kate & Allie, ” Coben
wrote fo r the show’s first two seasons. Cur­
rently, she is working on a new series fo r
NBC called “Sweet Sixteen” and a feature
film screenplay fo r Tri-Star and Dolly Parton. Coben’s other writing credits include
“Ryan’s Hope, ” “Love Long Distance, ”
“Thunder Road, ” “Best o f Friends, ” “Oh,
Boy! Babies!” and “Hot Hero Sandwich, ”
fo r which she received an Emmy award.
I am not entirely sure the subject of “being
a woman” came up in my household,
except by example and inference. My
mother was (and is) a brilliant woman,
extremely motivated but without any job
outside the home for the first thirteen years
of my life. While my Halloween costumes
were by far the finest and my lunches the
most sumptuous, the subtle message there
for me was: Don’t do that. I haven’t.
In a subconscious swing of the domestic
pendulum, my floors are as dust-laden as
my mother’s were polished. My husband
vacuums; for reasons I can not quite
fathom, I refuse to do so. Perhaps it is the
phantom image of my mother on her
hands and knees, waxing an already

Sherry Coben
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

waxed floor, a ’60s precursor to Mary
Hartman, but without the satirical edge.
My mother’s mother worked; a cleaning
woman cooked and cared for her children.
My father’s mother worked too. Both sides
of my family for generations were popu­
lated by forward-thinking, liberated, inde­
pendent, educated women whose men
loved and respected them. I mention that
only because I think it rare.
In my adolescence, my mother came to
and within a few years conquered a world
that excited her, special education. She is a
gifted teacher. I think the message of her
life is that one can have it all, but not
necessarily all at once.
My parents are since divorced and
happily remarried to others far more suit­
able. Again the message was clear: Choose
carefully. I did, marrying at 30, instead of
20 as my mother did. The assumption
always was that I would follow my own
lead, my own singular drive, that I had it
within me to succeed on the only terms
that count—my own. My brother was
likewsie encouraged. I wonder, though,
whether my parents would have taken my
decision to leave college, short of a degree,
with so much aplomb and equanimity had
I been a son. I like to think so.
The hardest thing about growing up
female seems a blessing in retrospect.
Bright and short and hardly attractive, I
was consumed with envy of all the easy
popularity of the beautiful girls, the com­
fortable anonymity of the average. I devel­
oped a thick skin, self-confidence that is
practically unshakable, and a sense of
humor that more than pays the rent. I
would not have had my childhood play
itself out differently.
I hesitate to label myself a woman
writer—the industry, however, does not
hesitate at all. Entertainment is still by and
large a man’s world, bossed by an old-boy
network I cannot join, but other trailblazers have made my path a bit easier.
Television and film are not fields that put
out the welcome mat to any newcomers,
male or female; the stakes are high. Wom­
en face many of the same inequities as
they do in other industries. We are vir­
tually shut out of top management posi­
tions, assuring us a second-class standing,
but talent does out. My work is on the
page. While writing real, human women
for the screen is a responsibility I do not
take lightly, I also write men. Since I am
short and young and a woman, some men
patronize me. That will change. My suc­
cess gives me power and a title, and with
that power and title, I will be very con­
scious of easing the path for the women
who come after me.

Jane Richardson’s schematic drawing o f an
enzyme. Its structure was deciphered by her
and her husband, David C. Richardson ’62.

Jane Shelby Richardson ’62
Jane Richardson, who in June was named
a MacArthur Fellow fo r her work on the
classification o f protein structures and
design o f novel proteins fo r synthesis, has
the unique distinction o f becoming an
associate medical research professor at
Duke University without a doctorate (M.A.
in the philosophy o f science and a master
o f arts in teaching from Harvard). Rather,
she was drawn into the field by her hus­
band, David C. Richardson ’62, “who not
only wanted a fam ily and has truly done
his share o f coping with it, but who also
deliberately helped me attain an inde­
pendent standing in the field. ”
At the age of 4 4 ,1 fall somewhere
between the older generation of unrecog­
nized women and the present crop who
can often move up through the normal sys­
tem. I sometimes have been unfairly kept
back and sometimes unfairly pushed into
prominence by being a woman. Although
I certainly enjoy recognition, I tend to dis­
trust public judgment, either when it
ignores me or when it celebrates me, either
of which can happen for the wrong rea­
sons. Therefore, I have the advantage of
being willing to risk a reputation whose
value and permanence I don’t quite believe
in. Of course, even if one’s career is not
blossoming, it is essential to survive as a
scientist at some level—but that is the sort
of thing most women learned to do long
ago.

I believe there are some ways in which
women do science significantly differently
from men, even taking into account the
wide range of personality and style on
both sides. I have in fact deliberately
cultivated such differences because I find
much more excitement in “To see what
everyone else has seen, and to think what
no one else has thought” than I do in “Ah,
but the point is to get the answers first.”
One distinctively female approach is
exhaustively looking, in detail, at each
beautifully quirky and illuminating piece
of data with a receptive mind and eye.
This is in contrast with the more masculine
strategy of framing an initial hypothesis,
writing a computer program to scan the
reams of data, and obtaining an objective
and quantitative answer to that one ques­
tion while perhaps missing more signifi­
cant answers which are suggested only by
unexpected patterns in those endless
details. Men are apt to label this sort of
science compulsive drudgery, but I think
they are missing both the inherent charm
of close acquaintance with the phenomena
and the substantial fruitfulness of it. It is
no coincidence that the fields in which
women have been most notable are those
with a large and complex base in observa­
tion: astronomy, anthropology, crystal­
lography, and all sorts of biology, particu­
larly things like observation of animal
behavior.
Women also will inject more humanism
(artistic, literary, emotional, ethical, and
philosophical merit) into science once they
have enough security and self-confidence
to do so. I have had the good fortune to
feel that I had little to lose, and so I have
indulged in writing intelligible (and some­
times rather purple) prose which let my
personality show through, learning to draw

so that I could convey what I saw in the
protein structures, and expressing my intui­
tions about how the final structures
embody the history of how they folded
(ideas which are gradually gaining respect­
ability from the accumulation of much cir­
cumstantial evidence, since unfortunately
the relevant experiments are still unat­
tainable). Male scientists are amazingly
appreciative of all of this, but it is hard to
imagine their doing it themselves.
One other aspect of science that I think
characteristically feminine is truly cooper­
ative rather than competitive research. I
believe this reflects a strong underlying
preference and not just the fact that most
women have not been in a position to do
highly competitive research. I would far
rather see my ideas widely stolen and used
than scrupulously (but only occasionally)
credited. I think it is much more fun to
arrive jointly at an exciting answer than to
delay the insight by fighting over it.
I think also that you can be intensely
ambitious in science on very non­
establishment terms that have nothing at
all to do with running your own lab, get­
ting tenure and lots of grant money, or
even getting explicit recognition for your
ideas. The first big reward is the ex­
citement of attaining a new insight, inde­
pendent of whether it is shared with
anyone else. But if later work proves you
right and everyone else eventually ends up
adopting and using your ideas, then that is
success, and it can in some ways add to
the fun if they don’t always realize who
started it. I want immortality from both
my biological and my intellectual children,
but I don’t think they would be as much
worth procreating and nurturing if they
were always busy thinking of me as their
source.
10

Mary Williams Clark ’63
The twenty-third woman admitted to the
American Academy o f Orthopedic Sur­
geons, Mary Clark received her medical
degree from Yale University in 1967. She
is in pediatric orthopedics at the University
o f Virginia Children’s Rehabilitation Cen­
ter in Charlottesville, Va., and is the third
and current president o f the Ruth Jackson
Society, an organization composed o f 111
women orthopedists. Widowed, with an
infant daughter, seven years ago, Clark
remarried last year.
The early women’s movement touched my
life through my grandmother.
When, at age 94, she fell and broke her
leg, I visited her in the hospital. It was the
fall of 1972 and she asked me whom I was
going to vote for for president. “I don’t
think I’m going to vote, Grandma. I’m
really for McCarthy and I don’t think I
want to vote for McGovern and I’m cer­
tainly not going to vote for Nixon.”
“You’re not going to vote???!!! We had
to march for the right to vote. I don’t care
whom you vote for, but you go to the
polls and VOTE!”
At Swarthmore aspirations for a “non­
feminine” career were not viewed as unu­
sual; support was the same for men and
women. There may, perhaps, have been
some strong support for the “feminine”
contribution to the “art” of medicine. I got
some strong recommendations, and was
advised by the faculty pre-med committee
to apply to schools that I hadn’t thought I
could get into. They must have thought
that I had something to contribute. From
the perspective of this point in my career, I
think that “something” was a sense of
appreciation for the “whole patient,” not
just the disease or the disability.

Generally I faced little major opposition
to my plans to go into orthopedics, except
that I was openly told (in 1966) that there
were programs to which I couldn’t apply
since they wouldn’t accept an application
from a woman, and I was asked questions
about family plans—now illegal but still
frequently asked of applicants. There was
much kidding about the stereotypes of
orthopedic surgeons as big football players,
but there was real support from medical
school professors when they knew I was
serious about orthopedics’ being a most
exciting specialty. And I think that, in my
residency program (two years of general
surgery and three of orthopedics at the
University of Pittsburgh), I was truly
accepted as an equal colleague. However,
there are a few men in orthopedics, as in
other branches of medicine, whose ego
structures won’t allow them to accept
women as equals: They feel threatened
somehow that a woman can do what they
do. This attitude is usually very subtle, and
hard to detect in its reality but very dam­
aging to working relationships.
There are two psychological problems
with being a woman in medicine. One is
the “dancing dog” syndrome, which points
out that “when a dog dances, you’re not
impressed by the quality of the dance but
the fact that it’s dancing at all.” This
thought lurks in the back of our minds and
attacks at low moments, damaging our
self-esteem, and is reinforced by people
who are overly impressed that we are
women in our profession rather than by the
specifics of what we do or have done.
The second is the problem of having to
be “twice as good” to be recognized. It
may still be true and is reinforced by those
of us who choose to modify the traditional
twelve-to-sixteen-hour workday in favor of
home/family/other outside interests, there­
fore not progressing along accepted career
patterns to chief of department or head of
a large private practice group. We still
suffer guilt feelings when we leave work
before 6:00 or 6:30 even if we started at 7
a.m. The fact remains that there are not as
many doors open yet and women are not
represented proportionally at higher aca­
demic and administrative positions.
I have come to realize that this is not
yet an ideal world, one in which women
would be accepted in any role naturally
and without comment (much less without
blatant or subtle discrimination). We do
need women’s groups for mutual support
and the psychological life of sharing expe­
riences. These are the main thrusts of the
women’s movement, and I feel supported
and challenged by it to continue to work
toward that ideal.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

Jennie Boyd Bull ’67
Since receiving her master o f divinity
degree, summa cum laude, from Wesley
Theological Seminary three years ago, the
Rev. Jennie Boyd Bull has been pastor o f
the Metropolitan Community Church
(MCC) o f Baltimore and chair o f the
Faith, Fellowship, and Order Commission
o f Metropolitan Community Church, an
ecumenical Christian church serving the
gay and lesbian community. Jennie, her
lover Lila, and three cats share a rowhouse
in Baltimore, a home that “is an important
source o f security and comfort. ”
A couple of years ago, I visited the
Swarthmore campus for the first time in
many years. It was deserted—a few weeks
after graduation—but the remnants of
campus life still cluttered the bulletin
boards. I had returned with mixed
feelings—feeling inadequate and uncertain
about myself as one of classmates who are
professors, executives, and in other ways
traditionally “successful.” What relevance
did my life have to the “movers and shak­
ers” that many of my classmates had
become? And then I started reading the
bulletin boards: One of the fraternities had
burned some jeans in effigy in response to
a gay group’s “jeans” day on campus that
spring, and the words of anger and con-

Jennie Boyd Bull
NOVEMBER 1985

community. I have learned about
troversy flew out from the walls to testify
coalition-building with other issues—the
to the truth that my deepest self knew.
space to explore racism within the
Even at Swarthmore, issues of sexuality
women’s community, class issues among
and homophobia are critical to com­
us, sexual and relational choices and
munity. I found myself wishing I could
growth. Sometimes I am angered at the
have spoken to the community, pastored
white, middle-class insularity of some of
to the fear and the bigotry, led my work­
the women’s movement, especially since
shops on spirituality and sexuality, helped
much of my work at MCC is with work­
people cope with these gut issues that are
ing class lesbians of all races who are
part of all our lives and were so silent a
incest survivors, recovering alcoholics, etc.,
part when I was a student.
On commencement day at Swarthmore, in need of safe space—not rhetoric or tofu.
I have learned that it is exciting to pastor a
having graduated with high honors in
church that makes safe space (“sanctuary”)
English literature and preparing to go to
for women, for sexuality.
India with the American Friends Service
Committee, I was told by the chair of the
English Department: “I don’t know what
good it will do you,” referring to the major
and the degree. The assumption, of course,
was that if an English degree did not lead
to good mothering and wifing, then at least
it should lead to a good English professor­
ship somewhere, and if not, what’s the
point?
Well, my combination of English lit­
erature, fine arts, political science, political
activism, College chorus, Friday-night folk
dancing, fine arts movies, “Charlie Chaplin
seminars,” and intense friendships did lots
of good. It opened me to myself, to a wide
world of intellectual freedoms, to trusting
Barbara Babcock Dolliver ’48
my mind as a good one that I could use
A n English major who graduated with
however I wanted to. It opened me to
empathy for those with experiences differ­ high honors, Barbara Dolliver has never
ceased writing through thirty-seven years
ent from mine. The College gave me the
o f marriage and six children. Her writing
self-confidence to face the world on my
credits are numerous, including the article
own terms, to be open to a variety of
“W ere the Lucky Ones” in Good House­
things to do with my life, to not need the
keeping magazine (1969), based “on our
security of conventional careers or suc­
happy experience in the adoption o f the
cesses, to see the cutting edge of history
first
o f our two adopted daughters. ’’Bar­
and change as a choice I am always called
bara
also teaches English composition at a
to make. It was after Swarthmore that I
community
college, writes poetry (a sample
grew sexually and emotionally, but with­
out that growth of mind I’m not at all sure o f which is below), and delights in printing
chapbooks o f her work on a recently
I would have given myself permission to
acquired 1856floor model, foot treadle
grow at all. Thanks, and my hope is that
platen
press.
our daughters can come to Swarthmore
and grow all of themselves—mind, body,
Last year’s blackberry canes
and spirit.
Still have their thorns, the sooty tatters
I’ve considered myself part of the
Of last year’s leaves, but in that sullen sprawl
women’s movement from about 1971 to
I see at intervals along the arcs
Of those cruel whips, new knots,
the present, and am much relieved that
Pale silver, the pulse of growth to come,
after the intense “politically correct” focus
Leaves tightly folded like unspoken prayers.
of the earlier days, we are now much freer
to allow women a variety of interests and
You who have been raked by time
approaches to change and survival and
And now stand smarting, stiff, conscious
Of disfigurement, take heart.
growth. I have learned that friendship and
In the crown of thorns lies a promise
trust with other women are essential
Of new life, green leaves, fruit in abundance,
beyond any spousal relationship. I have
And under a sun that has yet to shine
learned to value my gifts and abilities and
Blood shall one day flow as wine.
the right and responsibility to use them. I
have learned that social change is possible When people ask me what I do for a liv­
ing, I say, “I am a lily of the field. I toil
without “burning out” if it springs from
not, neither do I spin.” Frivolous answer?
self-interest and a dedication to building
11

Perhaps. But it is a playful way to deflect a
question that threatens to limit identity to
occupation, the current status determining
whether a contract will be continued or
terminated as soon as decently possible.
But the women’s movement has touched
my life. I can play “dress up”—no more
fashion dictates! No more automatic
categorizing as cookie supplier and taker
of notes at meetings! More seriously, I
have become inner-directed rather than
subjugated to the social tyrant “ought.” I
am moved, not by ego, but by the prompt­
ings of the spirit within.
At College Jane Austen and Emily
Dickinson became my mentors. Neither
was a “career woman” but both made
remarkable contributions in domestic
contexts, not “earning their living,” but
earning their place in life. Swarthmore was
not a trade school for me. It furnished me
with the intellectual stuff with which to
compose a life of domestic service and, I
trust, some inspiration and heart to one
man, to our family, and to a few students,
a few groups, and a few readers.
For me the hardest thing about growing
up female was taking responsibility for
myself. I had no personal career goals. I
was taught by example. There was a
traditional division of responsibilities: My
father did outside chores, my mother
housework and primary child care, both
encouraging my interests as I grew. During
the war my mother worked as a drafts­
man. The message transmitted was: Use
your talents, do what needs to be done,
pursue your individual interests. This still
seems appropriate. I want our daughters as
well as our sons to be able to make their
own way, to keep themselves. I hope each
will find a life companion, will contribute
to society in some way, finding a measure
of happiness in so doing.

segregated. I went to Swarthmore High
School, where there was plenty of aca­
demic competition, but it was based on
your grades, not your sex.
When I went to college I found the
Quaker spirit had been an essential part of
Swarthmore since its beginning: coedu­
cation on principle, Board of Managers,
and student body. Decisions of the Board,
when I was there, reflected unquestioning
fidelity to the principle of equality for
individuals, in opportunity and in respon­
sibility. To be regarded for four important
years as a person with your own talents
and your own interests cannot fail to influ­
ence your feeling as to what you do with
the rest of your life.
When I decided to run for the legisla­
ture in Massachusetts, there were two
women House members out of 240, and
one woman Senator out of forty. (Lots of
people suggested I might better run for
School Committee.) When I came into the
House, I realized that for many members
there had been two kinds of political
women up to then—the aggressive fem­
inist who believed that any woman could
be whatever it was better than a man,
followed by the “separate but equal”
approach which suggested that women
could do a better job chairing the social
welfare committee, but would not get
much involved in problems of highway
construction. I decided very consciously
that it was time for another step. My role
was simply to be a person who was an
elected representative.
The problem was largely one of com­
munication. The men who turned to each
other in debate and said—many times I
heard them—“What’s she know about
that?” were asking an honest question. It
had simply never occurred to them that
women knew or cared about most of the

Mary B. Temple Newman ’30
After a reporter fo r Ms. magazine talked
with Mary Newman about her fifteen years
as a member o f the Massachusetts House
o f Representatives, she said Mary had “an
old-fashioned faith in the possibilities o f
representative government. She ran her
campaigns the old-fashioned way— talking
to people in her district and ringing door­
bells. ” Still active politically, Mary refuses
to be labeled retired “I ’m self-employed. ”
Her contributions have earned her honor­
ary degrees from Regis College and
Swarthmore.
I grew up where there was plenty of open
space. There were twenty kids in the
neighborhood. We played all kinds of
games, including baseball, and I never felt
12

Mary Newman on the campaign trail

problems we were facing. They weren’t
hostile or cruel; they came from homes
and communities where women hadn’t
gotten out much and they were really
ignorant. Once you recognized this, it was
easy to tackle the problem from a position
of friendly superiority. To be an effective
legislator, you must have the respect, the
confidence, of your colleagues. Nothing
personal. It’s part of the job and you have
to figure out how to do it. No point in get­
ting paranoid about it.
When I became Secretary of Manpower
Affairs in Governor [Francis W.] Sargent’s
Cabinet, I worked constantly with labor
officials and business executives. At meet­
ings or when I was speaking it was not
infrequently asked, more or less explicitly,
“What’s a woman doing in this job?” And
I could respond, “Scary, isn’t it—but you’ll
get used to it.”
My best example was one of my depart­
ment heads, a labor leader, a man who
had been a power in the Stationary Engi­
neers union all his life, who in his wildest
nightmare had never, I am sure, con­
sidered having a woman as his boss. I still
remember his almost frozen expression at
my swearing-in ceremony. Could you
blame him? I felt sorry for him! I sensed
what his personal and social stereotypes
might be for authority-women: bossy, not
understanding men’s problems, interfering,
whatever. My approach was to establish a
level of mutual courtesy and respect, to
recognize his authority in his own area. It
worked. In six months, we had a very
pleasant and sound relationship and I got
word through the various grapevines
that he said it wasn’t bad. He was kind of
pleased that the only woman in the
Cabinet was in his area.
I know there are strong objections to
this approach in the women’s movement.
You’re pandering, you’re accepting this
attitude of male superiority, you’ve got to
get in there and fight. You have to demand
attention for women’s issues. I can’t buy it.
I don’t believe there is a genuine issue in
the world in which the real interests of
women are contrary to those of men—and
I think most women and men know that.
After centuries of domesticity and secondclass status, women have a lot to do to
catch up. But most men are decent,
friendly, able to learn, needing a bit of a
needle-jab once in a while, but mostly
needing to feel confident that “this woman
knows what she’s doing, is willing to pull
her share, wants to work with me, and
come to think of it, it’s a good idea.” You
have to insist—be willing to say what you
think—but let’s forget the hostility and the
anger.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

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There is a problem to be solved. It involves girls. The only grammatically correct way of
sex. Instead of referring it to Ann Landers or not slighting them is to say “his or her book,”
Miss Manners or even the Playboy Advisor, “he or she should,” “talk to him or h e r. . . ”
this column is calling for help from all of you Such a repetitive doubling of pronouns,
out there in newspaperland, especially unfortunately, is awkward and beyond a
English teachers, literature professors, and certain point, ridiculous. That’s why the
Swarthmore song doesn’t say “his or her
smarty-pants pundits.
I’m not the first one to bring it up, nor hats off to us.”
If the class is all boys there is no problem.
even the thousandth. It probably was dis­
turbing people during Chaucer’s time. It There is no problem if it is all girls, in which
probaby worried Chaucer himself, and cer­ case the feminine pronouns would be used.
tainly Shakespeare. The problem could be But suppose the class has 25 girls and five
exemplified in dozens of ways, but I illustrate boys. Does the teacher then use the mascu­
line? Or suppose it has 29 girls and one boy?
it with the words to a song:
Such is the structure of our male-macho
Everybody takes their hats o ff to us,
society that boys (and men) would resent
Stars o f evening shining;
Bet your money on the Swarthmore team, being lumped in as “she” or “her,” even
though girls (and women) have endured the
For that is the time you’ll win.
I selected that song because it represents a reverse treatment for centuries.
For most Americans the problem about
scandal as well as an intellectual compro­
mise. That silly football jingle notwithstand­ which I write so urgently has long since been
ing (not sung much anymore, I hear), solved precisely as it is in the song. The
Swarthmore College is supposed to be a grammar rule is broken without even giving
haven of the academic elite. And yet its song it a thought. Plural pronouns are used
uses flagrantly bad grammar. The noun throughout, to wit: “Everyone is to take their
“everybody” is singular. Therefore to be book home tonight and read the first chapter.
correct the line should read “takes his hat off
to us.” But that’s the problem. Swarthmore
is coeducational and would like to think that
people of both sexes remove their hats. So
the dilemma is solved by ungrammatically
using the word “their” for lack of any
alternative.
To illustrate the impasse further, imagine
a teacher writing the homework assignment
on the blackboard: “Everybody is to take his
book home tonight and read the first chapter.
If anyone has any difficulty, I will talk to him
tomorrow.”
The teacher in this case is using the
conventional means of addressing a mixed
group. This requires using the textbookcorrect form, that is, masculine pronouns
—he, him, his. The class, however, includes
NOVEMBER 1985

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If anyone has any difficulty, I will talk to
them tomorrow.”
When I was writing for television in the
1960s and 70s, and every station was going
to extraordinary lengths to prove it was not
sexist, I wrote an editorial about some
mundane topic, like taxes—“. . . everyone,
when he receives his tax bill. . . ” My general
manager, who had to read my editorial on
the air, changed “his” to “their.”
“That’s bad grammar,” I said. “Tough,”
he replied. “Women pay taxes, too.” Of
course, in every way but grammatically, he
was right.
How, then, to solve the problem? Soon
after it first appeared, Ms. magazine, the
quasi-official journal of feminism, came up
with its own solution: the creation of neuter,
all inclusive pronouns. If I remember cor­
rectly, the new pronoun for he and she was
“te,” while for her or him it was “tim.” The
possessive was “ter.” Ten years have passed
and, obviously, this solution has proved a
total failure.
Let’s go, grammarians: Tell us what we
should do. If you can find a solution,
everybody will take off their hats to you.
Gwinn Owens, op-ed page editor fo r the
Baltimore Evening Sun ( “the main priority’’)
and syndicated columnist ( “one a week,
strictly a sideline”), received gobs o f re­
sponses to this column, “all o f them ridic­
ulous. ” He recently returned from a Sun
assignment in Greece, where he interviewed
the Minister o f Culture, Melina Mercouri
“Two weeks after my return she was in
Washington where we met again like old
friends and I received (it not being Sunday) a
Mercouri bear-hug— in front o f a lot o f
jealous Washington-type reporters. She had
read my article. ”
Reprinted with permission o f the Baltimore
Evening Sun, copyright ® 1985.
13

Women’s Rights: Unfinished Business

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO

The Women of ’62?
By Evelyn Edson ’62
1962. The war for Algerian independence, Castro victorious in
Cuba, the civil rights movement in full swing, American astronauts
circling the earth. Things were changing in America. Even in our
ivory tower the transition from student passivity (academic
detachment?) to student activism had occurred during the Class of
’62’s tenure. In the spring of ’59 I was the cub reporter assigned to
cover Student Council. The big issue that spring was the
construction of a book cart to be placed outside Parrish in the
mornings so that one could return reserved books on time and still
have breakfast. At each meeting the discussion went on: Who
would design the cart? Who would build it? Suppose it got out of
control on the steep slope from Parrish to the library? At this point
I can no longer remember whether the cart was built or not—
somehow I think it didn’t. Before two years had elapsed Student
Council agendas had turned to sending telegrams to jailed civil
rights workers in Alabama and scorching admonitions to the
government of South Africa about (then) Angola. The ’60s were
upon us, but for women the other shoe had not yet dropped. Some
time during that decade a woman holding a coffee pot would pause
in an act of feminine service and draw the same conclusions that
Elizabeth Cady Stanton drew at the anti-slavery convention in
London in 1840. But for now the Class o f’62 was about to enter a
changing, but still emphatically sexist, world.
A few of us were getting married. In the last months of our senior
year there had been a flurry of engagement rings and showers.
Some of the rest of us thought of ourselves as “not getting married.”
We hadn’t come to college to get married, exactly, but had thought
of marriage as an agreeable by-product. I looked at my current

“If women had to be twice as
good to go half as far, then
goddammit we were going to
be eight times as good and
go twice as fa r.99
14

boyfriend and thought, “Not him. Not now.” Then I went to the
Career Office and began to look through the cards there.
Graduate school and the Peace Corps were picking up some
recruits; some of us were at loose ends. A few dedicated souls were
headed for medical or law school. I don’t think any of us were
aware how hostile these new environments would be to bright
women after the unfailing and scrupulously equal treatment of the
sexes at Swarthmore. In a few months Mary Murphy Schroeder
and Marsha Swiss would be welcomed to law school (Chicago and
Harvard) by being told that they were taking the place of men. “I
didn’t want you here,” the dean of Harvard Law School reportedly
told a group of entering female students in September 1962.
The job market was no friendlier. Working as a trainee at Look
Magazine, Betsy Rodman Salandria would see the male trainees
being moved into the editorial departments after six weeks, whilp
the women were shunted into secretarial or short-term assign­
ments. Betsy found herself at the receptionist’s desk. “I was fired for
having a bad attitude, e.g., I wanted to pass the time sitting at a
reception desk, with nothing to do, reading and they wanted me to
do nothing but sit there idly, looking eager to receive.” Betsy adds:
“They weren’t 100 percent anti-female at Look. They sent a U.S.
senator’s daughter over to the editorial section after only a week.”
Dari Eves Kleinbach, teaching at Wilmington Friends, discov­
ered that a man hired right out of college at the same time she was,
was getting $500 more, and not being asked to do the guidance
counseling and sports coaching she was doing. “Men need more
money.” Says Kleinbach, “That’s a direct quote and from a Friends
school, too.”
Yes, that was the Real World in 1962—not a very hospitable
place for Swarthmore women. Most of us gritted our teeth and
went ahead. If a woman had to be twice as good to go half as far,
then goddammit we were going to be eight times as good and go
twice as far.
As I look back, Swarthmore just then seemed like an ideal
world. Female students were treated as seriously as males. Maybe
even more seriously, for in those days the competition for women
to get into Swarthmore seemed stiffer than for men, and many
female students felt that on the whole they were a shade better
qualified than the men. Also, some of our teachers were eager to

see women achieve and encouraged us in our dreams to be doctors,
lawyers, politicians, scholars. From some, though, we heard a few
words of cautionary advice as we moved into our last months of
college. A kindly biology professor took one woman aside and
asked her if she really wanted to go to medical school, if she was
aware of the anti-female bias she would encounter there. Today she
is half indignant (“sexism at Swarthmore!”) and half grateful
(“What he said was true—I wasn’t prepared for that and probably
couldn’t have handled it.”).
Looking back now from the vantage point of the women’s
movement, Jackie Lapidus writes: “Swarthmore expected us to
work as hard as men, do as well, and go as far, but nobody ever told
us the salaries would be lower, the attitudes condescending,
advancement more difficult, and sexual pressures in the workplace
as pervasive as they were in private life. Nobody dealt, in college,
with the question of how we were to live as women in a world
defined by and for men.”
Increasingly I felt during my years at college that all these
mountains of academic work and the relentless pressure to do well
were somehow interfering with my real work, which was to grow
up to be a woman. Our relationships with men and with other
women were crammed into odd hours. Nobody thought it strange
if one of us abandoned a weeping roommate or a despairing lover
because she had to study for an exam or finish a seminar paper.
Those long conversations to which we were addicted were
considered “wasting” time which should properly have been spent
disentangling the syntax of Proust or the mysteries of baroque
architecture.
By June 1962 I had had enough of that (little did I know how
joyfully I would return!) and decided not to go to graduate school
for more of the same. Almost consciously I put myself on hold—I
needed some time to grow up. After all, in our real lives as women,

Evelyn Edson ’62 teaches history at the Piedmont Virginia
Community College in Charlottesville.

wouldn’t human relations be our major? There was an air of
unreality for me in all the emphasis on dogged academics.
Thinking back, I’m not sure what I wanted: not sex discrimination
(don’t trouble your pretty little head about this!), not easier
courses. Maybe I would have most benefited from a conscious
confrontation of the tightrope we were walking then between

“The pa st fifteen years have
drastically affected the
relationships between men and
women and all our marriages
have been touched. 1
achievement and womanhood. We’re still walking it.
Jackie Lapidus again: “In retrospect, much of the pain,
bewilderment, and frustration I felt at college, and many of my
wrong choices, seem to me now to have stemmed from not having
any kind of consciousness-raising with my women friends. We
pooled our resources sometimes, but not our emotional informa­
tion. We didn’t realize we were being ‘had’ by a male-dominated
culture, or, if we did, we thought that being ‘better’ than the
average woman would exempt us from the worst effects of the
system.”
Then it was 1970 and the women’s movement was in full swing.
At first I think most of us didn’t see that it had anything to do with
us. Those of us who had married and had children were probably
the first to catch on. Rosemary Werner Putnam had been living
overseas with two small children while her husband was doing
research. “I thought the isolation I felt, had to do with living in a
foreign country, but when I returned to America, I found other
women in my situation feeling the same way. Something had
happened while I was away.”
“ 1970,” says Sue Ehrlich Martin. “That was an awful year for
me. I had two kids in diapers, we had just moved from an
apartment to a house, my husband was struggling with a
demanding job—I was bored and lonely.” Looking for some time
out of the house, she made contact with other women and
eventually found her way to the Washington Woman’s Center,
where she participated in consciousness-raising groups. “It helped
mobilize me into graduate school and sociology.”
Carolyn Penta Coolidge: “I’d become increasingly frustrated
with the demands of a house and two small children, and with the
arrival of the third, though planned, in 1970,1 recognized a feeling
of being trapped. I’m sure this recognition was prompted by the
feminist ideas around.” She returned to school, taking the science
courses she had been afraid of at Swarthmore and moving
eventually into the field of public health.
Rosemary Putnam says: “I went to college with one set of
expectations—I would get a good education, learn to do some­
thing, and get married. Now that was no longer enough. The rules
of the game had changed in the middle.”
Sue Martin adds: “I looked at the career-oriented women at
Swarthmore, like Sue Wright [Fletcher] and Marsha Swiss, and
while I admired them, I knew they were not me. I wanted a
husband and children, and I feared that excluded a demanding
career.”
About her experience at graduate school right after college,
Carolyn Coolidge writes: “It was clear that females got M.A.s and
went into teaching at secondary schools or junior colleges, and
15

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males went for Ph.D.s—I was programmed, by myself, not to go
far anyhow.” Soon afterward, she left school to get married.
For the women who were on their way to established careers,
the women’s movement had a different impact. Many of us were
the classic male-identified women, that is we identified more with
our fathers or male mentors than with our mothers or other female
models whom we felt to be weak or simply leading boring lives.
Says Dari Kleinbach: “It’s taken me forty years to see some
interests in common with other women.” Marsha Swiss, who had a
lawyer/judge mother with whom to identify, at first pulled away
from the women’s movement. She had had a struggle to be
considered in her profession first as a lawyer, rather than a woman,
and reacted against special organizations and special favors for
women as discriminatory. Kathie Malley White, now a psy­
chology professor at Boston University, says: “I feel I had all the
advantages, particularly my excellent education at Swarthmore,
which gave me strong self-confidence. Other women have not
been so fortunate.” White, who is a paraplegic as a result of a car
accident in 1965, comments that she has been discriminated
against more as a handicapped person than as a woman.
Mary Schroeder, now a U.S. Circuit Court judge, sees herself as
having been in the right place at the right time. “When I graduated
from law school, just after passage of the first federal laws against
sex discrimination, the government was beginning to welcome
women to its ranks as lawyers. When I came to Arizona a few
years later, there were some far-sighted lawyers and judges who
were ready to encourage women to go into the ranks of private
practice and, a little later, the judiciary. I therefore did not undergo

“Marsha Swiss writes: Men
constitute a meaningful
minority in this country and
I ’m not about to write them
off quite yet.’ ”
16

Reprinted with special permission of King Features Syndicate, Inc.

any painful re-evaluation of my life. I rode the crest of the wave.”
Dari Kleinbach, who became a commodity broker in the
1970’s, says: “I didn’t choose to have a career. I was working to
support my student husband and two children. I looked on it as my
‘career’ only after our separation. Before that I simply chose a less
oppressive way to be a breadwinner.” Working in an all-male field,
Kleinbach found certain advantages in being female. People
remembered her when she called, and paradoxically, clients
figured that a woman would not have made it in this field unless
she was outstandingly competent.
“Yes, maybe we did have it twice as hard,” writes Kleinbach.
“We also didn’t waste a lot of time talking about it. We just went
about our lives and took our raps and made an increasingly better
name for women in business. I’m not convinced that quotas and
equal opportunity laws are as effective as good old-time experi-'
ence.” In her present work on several advisory committees and
boards dealing with agriculture, she has become interested in
developing the leadership potential of women farmers.
For the career women, sisterhood with other women was at first
a novel idea. Marsha Swiss feels that the embattled position of
women in law school tended to isolate them from one another—
you didn’t want to be identified with the losers. In graduate school
at the University of Chicago, my fellow female students in history
disappeared around me at a great rate. My unofficial statistic: Out
of thirty women in my entering class, only one other besides me
finished her Ph.D., so soon there weren’t any other women to
relate to.
Writes Jackie Lapidus: “At Swarthmore in those days, there
was a lot of mutual aid, up to a point. I remember chipping in to
send a classmate to Cuba for an abortion (before that became
impossible), passing around short lists of gynecologists on the East
Coast (for both abortion and contraception), intense intellectual
collaboration, strong bonding around shared unhappiness; my real
friendships were with women, and only women. The tensions of
sexuality always interfered with my interactions with men (one
way or another, whether or not there was sex), and more often,
with my female friendships, since it was implicit that ‘love’ was
more important than women’s friendships with each other. As a
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

result of the [women’s] movement, I now think that we were all
incredibly alienated, unaware of our real feelings (I was in love
with at least one, if not more, of my roommates over the four years,
and didn’t know what it was), scared of ourselves and of one
another. We let one another down as much as we propped one
another up. I see sisterhood as more than that. My commitment to
myself and to other women comes before anything else now.”
Some of us have come to a new understanding of female
solidarity through our daughters. It was of her two daughters that
Mary Schroeder thought first when Geraldine Ferraro was
nominated for vice president. Kathie White, also the mother of a
daughter, reports that she wept throughout Ferraro’s acceptance
speech.
After reading a draft of this article, Marsha Swiss wrote to me,
pointing out that I had said very little about the men who share our
lives—husbands, colleagues, bosses, sons, and lovers. As I quailed
at the prospect of correcting this slight, I was reminded of the
woman who sidled up to me at a National Women’s Studies
Association meeting several years ago and whispered, “I hear
you’re married. Well, so am /.”
The past fifteen years have drastically affected the relationships
between men and women and all our marriages have been
touched. Some of us have managed to keep one marriage together
through it all. Others have changed husbands in midstream. Others
married late and chose carefully. But in one way or another most of
us still find emotional satisfaction through a relationship with a
man.
Educating men in feminism hasn’t been easy, but it’s been
necessary for survival. The old joke goes, Is there such a person as a
feminist man? Yes, but you have to create him. Once again, as
Rosemary Putnam observes, the rules of the game have been
changed in the middle. Some men have been happy to give up car
maintenance and talks with the broker for additional child
maintenance and cooking supper. Others have been resentful or
just bewildered. Don’t you find that a man who opens a door for
you these days either apologizes or makes a political speech? Just
in thinking back over the short courses in feminism administered
by ourselves, let us remember:
• the colleague who didn’t understand why sexist jokes weren’t
funny until you told him a racist one;

“Kleinbach writes: T was once
asked to clean up the office at
the end o f the work day. I ju st
laughed. The subject never
came up again. ’ ”
• the father who claimed he couldn’t change a dirty diaper without
vomiting (women naturally love the smell of baby shit?);
• the husband who washed all the dishes in the same increasingly
greasy water (and other forms of housework sabotage), insisting it
was more ecological;
• the boss who greeted me with a sexual proposition every time I
came into his office until I explained why I didn’t like it. And he
understood. And stopped doing it.
Marsha Swiss writes: “The fact is that, although a professional
life is deeply engrossing (and ultimately sustaining) for those of us
who have followed this course, no life is worth much without the
richness that comes of sharing it with someone precious and
watching youngsters and others flesh it out. Men constitute a
meaningful minority in this country, and I’m not about to write
them off quite yet. My senior partners are all men, my postman is a
grand character by the name of Mr. Ray Johnson, my paralegal is a
young fellow who sets my teeth on edge by addressing me as
“ma’am” precisely in order to set my teeth on edge, and, yes, some
of my best friends___”
All women of 1962 are now at the midpoint of their careers.
Many of us are wives. Some are mothers, all are involved in
demanding careers. What is ahead for us? Rosemary Putnam, a
teacher of emotionally disturbed and handicapped children, is
experiencing the first year with both of her own children away
from home: her son is in college and her daughter, a junior in high
school, is an exchange student in Venezuela. She speculates, “I
wonder whether, if I identified myself first as a teacher and then as
a mother, instead of the other way around, I would find the
adjustment so difficult.”

ARTC

Copyright, 1985, G. B. Trudeau. Reprinted with permission of
Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved.

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NOVEMBER 1985

17

( Continued from the preceding page)

some small apartment houses in her area
and is managing them. She says: “It’s
satisfying to give people a nice place to live
and make very good money at the same
time. Of course, it’s not what we went to
such excellent schools for. On the other
hand, I can’t use unfair employment prac­
Students can now find seventeen women’s definitions of female and male nature in
tices against myself.”
studies courses in the catalogue by searching religion, philosophy, and the social and
Dari Kleinbach, exasperated with some
through the course and seminar listings political life of the community. Studying
aspects of the women’s movement, reports:
under each of the departments. Some are not women, therefore, naturally leads to the
“I was in downtown Chicago last week at
given every year; some are cross-disciplinary third area of inquiry: the implications of the
about 8:30 a.m. I saw a thousand female
and even cross-institutional.
social construction of gender for both
clones walk out of the train station: skirted
In 1972 there was one women’s studies women and men.”
suits (navy), floppy ties (maroon), oxford
course in the catalogue: Jeanne Marecek,
It is expected that the faculty will consider
cloth shirts (light blue), jogging shoes
assistant professor of psychology, introduced the proposal this year and approve it,
(white), brief cases (brown), short pageboy
“Psychology of Women” into the curric­ making women’s studies the seventh con­
haircuts. Only black women showed any
ulum, and it has remained the cornerstone of centration possible in the curriculum, join­
sense of style and individuality. Why do
women’s studies ever since.
ing Asian studies, black studies, interna­
women have to try to be men?”
Thirteen years later a group of faculty tional relations, theatre, public policy, and
Marsha Swiss feels strongly that there
members has proposed to the faculty a computer science. A concentration is de­
are some special qualities women can
concentration in women’s studies. “The fined as a set of five courses that goes beyond
bring to the legal profession: compassion,
study of women and gender,” reads the a major.
for instance, and a sensitivity to human
proposal, “includes consideration of the
The proposal calls for a minimum of five
relationships. She has just finished working
following areas: the contributions of women courses in women’s studies, and at least three
on a study for the D.C. Bar, entitled
to culture and the cultural representations of of these credits shall be outside the student’s
“Alternatives to Litigation.” Not all rela­
women; the activities of women in history major; a capstone colloquium and one
tionships have to be adversary ones.
and the positions they have occupied in past course in each of two different departments;
For me the women’s movement has
and present societies; and the relationship and completion of the equivalent of a
marked a real turning point. Historians
between biological sex and social roles— comprehensive examination devised by the
deal in explanations, so perhaps it makes
most broadly construed, the social construc­ colloquium instructor. An independent
sense that I should treasure the light that
tion of gender.
study may substitute for one course. The
the movement cast on all aspects of life—
“The first two areas address women both capstone colloquium, taught as a seminar,
mine and other people’s. A women’s per­
as agents—whether artists, creative writers, will examine in depth a topic in feminist
spective helped explain hitherto puzzling
monarchs, or mothers—and as subjects of theory selected by the instructor.
events. When I was writing my disserta­
men’s imaginative productions and social
The proposal was designed by a sub­
tion in economic history, I was chagrined
arrangements. For example, studies might committee of the two-year-old standing
when my graduate adviser commented,
examine representations of femininity and Committee on Women’s Concerns, an out­
“Women are good at economic history.
masculinity in literature and art, as well as growth of the Ad Hoc Committee on
You know, it’s like grocery lists.” It’s taken
me a long time to assert the primacy of
grocery lists in both my own life and in
history. I have turned more and more to
women’s history in my professional life to
make full and round the flat picture of
political history that I originally studied at
Swarthmore.
There is no conclusion to this article.
Interview a dozen Swarthmore alumnae
and you’re going to get a dozen different
points of view. I was impressed by the
women of 1962 and the amount of think­
ing they had put into balancing their roles
as women and as contributors to the public
world. Some have done this as SuperMom—others in more modest capacities.
Dari Kleinbach writes: “My upbringing
and Swarthmore gave me guts enough to
ignore situations where there was discrim­
Working toward approval o f a women’s studies concentration are members o f the Committee on
ination. I was once asked to clean up the
Women’s Concerns: back row, left to right, Eve Faber ’87; Janet Mass, assistant director o f Career
office at the end of the work day. I just
Planning and Placement; Joy Charlton, assistant professor o f sociology; Marjorie Murphy, assistant
laughed. The subject never came up again.”
professor o f history and chair o f the committee; front row: Abbe Blum, instructor in English literature;
So to all of you, keep laughing!
iRW Rachelle Abrahami ’86; Melanie Phillpot ’86; Helene Shapiro, assistant professor o f mathematics.

Walter Holt

Women’s Studies concentration
seeks approval by faculty

18

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

S WARTH MORE

Jeanne Marecek, associate professor o f psychol­
ogy, who chaired the Committee on Women’s
Concerns during the 1984-85 academic year.

Women’s Studies in the
curriculum 1985-86
Biology
Directed Readings in Feminist
Critiques of Biology
Economics
Women in the Economy
Education
Women and Education
English Literature
Contemporary Women Poets
Criticism/Theory Colloquium:
Feminine Inscriptions in Tudor
and Stuart England
Representations of Women’s Identity
Women’s Labors: 1830-1880
History
Women, Society, and Change in
Modern Europe
Women, Society, and Politics
Women Working, Women Writing
Modern Languages and Literatures
Femmes écrivains
Ecriture féminine
L’Anden Régime (Social conditions
in 17th- and 18th-century France)
Music
Women Composers and
Choreographers of the
Early 20th Century
Psychology
Psychology of Women
Religion
Women and Religion in the West
Sociology and Anthropology
Sex Roles, Power, and Identity

NOVEMBER 1985

Women’s Concerns appointed in 1981 by
President Theodore Friend, whose final
report recommended establishing a women’s
studies program. If the proposal is approved,
it will join the some 500 women’s studies
programs in existence in the United States
(according to 1984-85 figures from the
National Women’s Studies Association).
Professor Marecek points out that a con­
centration would pull together on campus
the faculty members who teach women’s
studies courses in nine departments and give
them a structure in the curriculum to help
develop their mutual interests. It would
serve also, she adds, to demonstrate to the
students pursuing such courses that the
College legitimizes such study.
“Most of the push for women’s studies
comes from students,” says Assistant Pro­
fessor of History Marjorie Murphy, chair of
the Women’s Concerns Committee. “I was
one who pestered my professors as an
undergraduate. I wondered why Susan B.
Anthony took up only two sentences in a
textbook when her work seemed to merit
more than that.”
Three women student members of the
Women’s Concerns Committee described
the value of such courses to themselves.
Rachelle Abrahami ’86: “I was attracted
by the word ‘representations.’ That really
puts the finger on a lot of women’s problems

Lillian Li, associate professor o f history, and
chair o f the A d Hoc Committee on Women’s
Concerns appointed by President Friend.

these days. The courses help you to sift
through the socialization, media, literature,
and advertising to get at your own identity as
a woman. Doing it in conjunction with other
women, often from different backgrounds, is
important, and the discussions are great.
You tend to learn together.”
Melanie Phillpot ’86: “Women’s studies
courses are a challenge to the idea that
liberal arts courses are about people, when
they are often about men. In studying history
we want to get away from what Napoleon
did, and from kings and wars; a false sense of
the unity of women is portrayed against this
history. Life is dynamic rather than con­
sisting of single events.
Eve Faber ’87: “I find women’s studies
courses exciting because there is so much
new work being done. Some people say
women’s studies courses are easier than
others. They are wrong. You work much
harder to find out what there is and how to
analyze it and pull it together.” Faber herself
contributed to this new work when she
compiled a bibliography for six courses for
Professor of History Kathryn Morgan. She is
one of about thirty students who partici­
pated in a project supported by funds from
the Provost’s Office and run by Susan
Williamson, social science librarian. Under
Williamson’s guidance interested students
use computer searches and other reference
material to find appropriate readings about
women’s concerns for courses and seminars.
Some thirty-five faculty members have
taken advantage of this bibliographic assist­
ance to widen their course syllabi, and
students to date have produced nearly thirty
bibliographies.
Professor of Political Science Ray Hop­
kins took advantage of this bibliographic
assistance to widen his syllabus for “Com­
parative Politics: Africa and the Third
World.” Peter Schmidt, assistant professor
of English literature, used the service when
putting together “Studies in the American
Renaissance”; Associate Professor of Ger­
man Marion Faber used the service to
develop her course “German Women: Lit­
erature and Film.”
Williamson points out that the bibliog­
raphies not only aid women’s studies courses
but help to integrate material about women
into the general curriculum. They also help
her in developing the collection in the
library. —Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49
19

Kresge Foundation issues
$750,000 challenge to
complete new social center
One of the largest challenge grants ever
received by the College has been awarded
by The Kresge Foundation for the reno­
vation of Clothier Memorial to house the
new Tarble Social Center.
The $750,000, which must be matched
with designated individual gifts from alumni
and friends of the College, is intended to
encourage completion of the $5 million
project.
“Kresge awarded us this grant just at a
time when approximately $1,500,000 re­
mained to be financed for the rebuilding of
Tarble'and the repairs on Clothier,” ex­
plained Vice President Kendall Landis ’48.
“The challenge therefore encourages donors
to help complete this important project by
offering to match their gifts dollar for
dollar.”
Construction proceeds at fever pitch on
the old auditorium which, according to the
plans of architects Venturi, Rauch, and Scott
Brown, is being converted into three levels:
the main floor housing two eating areas, a
snack bar, and a cabaret; an upper level for
theatrical and social events and multi-pur­
pose use; and an excavated basement for the
new bookstore and rooms for television,
billiards, and games. The Cloisters and
Board of Managers rooms will remain intact
under the renovation plan, although they
will be refurbished. The courtyard garden
20

A carpenter works on the upper level o f the new Tarble Social Center in Clothier Memorial. A low wall
will surround the “floating tray” which has been constructed at the form er balcony level. This large
open space is designedfo ra variety o f uses—plays, dinners, parties, dances, informal gatherings, and
performances. The rededication o f the building is scheduled fo r Parents Weekend, A pril 18-20.

will be replanted and will be accessible from Board Member Emerita Helen
the eating areas on the main level.
The College was one of 140 charitable or­ Gawthrop Worth ’18 dies
ganizations awarded a total of $40,710,000 Helen Wilson Gawthrop Worth T8, mem­
in challenge grants by the Kresge Foundation ber emerita of the Board of Managers, died
this year.
Aug. 17 at Kendal at Longwood in Kennett
The grants were made toward projects Square, Pa. A member of the Board since
involving construction or renovation of 1940, she served on many committees and,
facilities and the purchase of equipment or from 1951-55, as the assistant secretary. '
real estate. Most award recipients had raised
Born in Harrisburg, Pa., she lived in
initial funds toward their respective projects Delaware for many years after receiving her
before requesting foundation assistance. B.A. in history. She served as director of the
Grants were then authorized on a challenge New Castle County branch of the Delaware
basis, requiring the raising of the remaining Emergency Relief Committee and had been
funds before payment of the Kresge Founda­ a trustee of the Wilmington Friends Meeting
tion funds, thereby ensuring completion of and a board member of the Wilmington
the projects.
Friends School. Mrs. Worth also was a life
member of the American Association of
*
University Women, which named a national
D eath claims w ives o f
scholarship in her honor in 1966.
Her family ties to Swarthmore included
tw o emeritus professors
her late husbands, William R. Gawthrop T8
Wives of two emeritus professors have died and Edward H. Worth ’02; her late children,
recently.
Elizabeth Gawthrop Donnelly ’43 and
Marian R. Meinkoth, professor emerita of William R. Gawthrop, Jr., ’46; and her late
economics at Temple University and wife of stepdaughter, Margaret Worth Crowther
Norman A. Meinkoth, emeritus professor of ’29.
zoology, died in September at age 71.
Surviving are her stepsons, William P.
Jean Sorber, wife of Professor Emeritus Worth ’35, Richard M. Worth ’37, and
of Spanish James Sorber and manager of the Edward H. Worth, Jr., ’39, her step­
College bookstore for twenty years, died in daughter, Ann Worth Crowther ’32, and
June.
two grandchildren.
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

Board chairmen trade secrets
with guidance from Gene Lang
“Anybody else have that problem and what
have you done about it?”
That question encapsulates the give-andtake that pervades a meeting of the Con­
ference of Board Chairmen of Small Inde­
pendent Liberal Arts Colleges (CBC), a
two-year-old organization founded by Eu­
gene M. Lang ’38 precisely to give board
chairmen the opportunity to know what
their counterparts at other liberal arts col­
leges are doing.
Everett Pope of Bowdoin asked the ques­
tion during a discussion of “the student
financial aid crisis” at the June meeting of
the group in New York City at the Williams
Club. He had just said that Bowdoin bor­
rows money from the state for its loan
program to families. Garrett Bewkes said
Colgate has a similar Parents Loan Fund
with funds arranged through banks. Alle­
gheny, on the other hand, reported Thomas
St. Clair, is not lending but trying to increase
endowment to finance student aid. Gettys­
burg, said Edwin T. Johnson, issued a bond
to provide capital for student loans through
a local bank.
Gene Lang from the chair asked, “Are
you conscious of any change in your admis­
sions policies because of growing financial
aid problems, such as taking more students
who can pay?”
After colleagues discussed that question,
another board chairman asked: “If a parent
wants to pay, at a discount, all four years
during freshman year, what would you do?
Does anyone have a well-thought-out pro­
gram along these lines?

Eugene Lang ’38

“Yes, we do,” said Amey DeFriez of
Radcliffe. I’ll send the outline to Gene, and
he can distribute it to all who are interested.”
The discussion then moved along to the
second agenda item, “Setting Board Meeting
Agendas: procedure, role of chairman in
determining format, content, topical scope.”
Kenneth Mason from Washington & Jeffer­
son made a short presentation, and a vig­
orous discussion followed.
Agendas for CBC meetings evolve from
the interests of the members and range
widely, from alcohol on campus, to long­
term planning, to workshops for board
members, a topic requested by Mason for
the November meeting (“Bring copies of
your workshop agendas!”). Lang then as­
sembles the agendas according to the mem­
bers’ wishes.

Of particular value to CBC members are
confidential surveys conducted by Lang, of
member attitudes and actions in dealing
with their special responsibilities as chair­
men. He is also the distribution center for
printed materials of all kinds that members
wish to share. (At the June meeting Lang
handed out a descriptive leaflet for admis­
sions officers by Sponsors for Educational
Opportunities, a nonprofit organization
which helps disadvantaged students obtain a
college education.) CBC holds three meet­
ings a year, lasting from mid-morning to
mid-afternoon.
Thirty-six institutions are represented
among the members, as far-flung as Agnes
Scott in Atlanta to Carleton in Minnesota.
Seven members are women, who all ex­
pressed preference for use of the word
chairman rather than chairperson or chair.
Seventeen chairmen attended this particular
meeting.
As a new board chairman some three
years ago, Lang realized how little he knew
about how other institutions were respond­
ing to national issues, what their problems
on campus were, and how they were dealing
with them. “The perspective of chairmen
tends to be limited by controlled exposure
(what is told them) and their distance from
the campus.” He wanted to know how other
board chairmen related to their presidents
on campus, how they chose committees,
appointed board members, exercised leader­
ship. He reached out to his counterparts at
small independent liberal arts colleges who
felt the same need for the knowledge and
experience of their peers.
Snatches of coffee-break conversation
between Pope and DeFriez seemed to sug­
gest that CBC is fulfilling its goal.
Pope: “We are operating today very
much based on what you did. I took very
seriously some of the things you said.”
DeFriez: “One of the real benefits of this
group is that it is safe space.”

Attention Biologists

Eugene Lang presides over a meeting o f the Conference o f Board Chairmen in New York City.
NOVEMBER 1985

The Department of Biology has launched
a biannual newsletter to keep its grad­
uates abreast of departmental happenings
and solicit their ideas on a variety of
departmental matters. The publication is
free to all who wish to receive a copy. If
you would like to be added to the mailing
list or would be interested in providing
career counseling or employment oppor­
tunities for current students, please send
your name and address to Professor
Timothy C. Williams, Chair, Depart­
ment of Biology, Swarthmore College,
Swarthmore, PA 19081.
21

DECK THE HALLS
WITH GIFTS FROM
SWARTHMORE
Whether for family, friends, or yourself, there’s
nothing like a gift that says you are proud of your
alma mater—and the alma mater is proud of you!
Those old campus memories are only as far away
as your mailbox. If you can’t get here in person, let
a gift from the Bookstore bring Swarthmore back to
you. A classic idea for holiday giving, too. Send us
your order today.

(7 )
S w a r th m o r e C o m m e m o r a tiv e
P l a t e . . . “ A T r e a s u r e d S y m b o l o f G o a ls
A c h ie v e d ” . 10% ” F in e C h in a w ith a G o ld
S e a l o n a M a r o o n fie ld , 2 2 k g o ld b o r d e r &
Michael Yu ’8

Lisa Marie M eehan ’86

a cc e n ts. L IM IT E D E D IT IO N . E x q u isite ly
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(1 1 ) C o f f e e C u p ...W h ite C era m ic w ith
m a r o o n se a l. $ 3 .2 9 @
Courtney Dinsm ore ’8

Send Orders To: Swarthmore College Bookstore, Swarthmore, PA 19081

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'. y .' :

In this issue:

rare”

1 Psychologist Carol Friedman
Gilligan ’58 and the “New
Feminism”

■

f%
jlSu

4 Student video combats “date
rape”
6 Nine alumnae discuss the
“pitfalls and potential of being
a woman”

■1 s ftS li

Iwrftese

in 1885 w e celebrate
with this issue)
wrote the Equal
Rights Amend­
ment (ERA) in
1923—three years
after successfully
leading the fight
for women’s voting
rights. Paul devoted
her entire life to this goal
and saw the ERA finally
emerge from Congress in
March 1972. She died five
years later at age 92. On
June 30,1982, the ERA
fell three states short
of the thirty-seven
required for
ratifie

13 A silly old Swarthmore
song. .. and sex
By Gwinn Owens ’47
14 What ever happened to the
women of ’62?
By Evelyn Edson ’62
18 The College
22 Class Notes
Editor:
Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49
Managing Editor:
Larry L. Elveru
Assistant Managing Editor:
Kate Downing
Gass Notes Editor:
Kathryn Bassett ’35
Copy Editor:
Ann D. Geer
Designer: Bob Wood
Cover: “College Day” on the picket
line for women’s suffrage in front of
the White House in February 1917.
Carrying the banners were students
from (left to right): the University of
Kansas, the University of Missouri,
Washington College, Leland
Stanford University, Bryn Mawr,
and Swarthmore. Photo courtesy of
the Smithsonian Institution.

ijP

I