WOMEN ON THE SOCIAL SCIENCE FACULTIES SINCE 1892
(at the University of Chicago)
by Jo Freeman

This research was inspired by a sit-in at the University of Chicago in the winter quarter of 1969 to protest the dismissal of Marlene Dixon at the end of a three year joint appointment as an assistant professor in the Departments of Sociology and Human Development. The students raised consciousness on how few women were on the University faculty. My original focus was to find out how many women had held faculty appointments in Sociology, but there were so few I expanded the research to five social science departments plus history. My findings were presented as a talk at four colloquia held that quarter by different units of the University, and later sold as a pamphlet. In 1970, the pamphlet was put into the record of Hearings before the Special Subcommittee on Education of the Committee on Education and Labor, House of Representatives, on Section 805 of H.R. 16098, held in Washington, D.C. in June and July 1970, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1971, pp. 994-1003.

When the University of Chicago opened its doors to students in 1892, it became the first major institution of higher education to begin its existence as a coeducational school. It even had women on the faculty. This was considered to be a very progressive policy at the time, daringly progressive. In 1900 only 23 Ph.D.'s were awarded to women in the whole country, out of a total of 383 such degrees. But has the University continued this policy? Or has it stood still while the rest of the country caught up with and surpassed it? In particular, has the position of women on the faculty improved, have they been hired and are they promoted on the same basis as men of comparable ability?
In an attempt to get at the answer to these questions, I spent a week going through all the University catalogs since 1892. I took a simple sex census of the six major departments: Anthropology, Economics, History, Political Science, Psychology, and Sociology. The census was done on the basis of first names, and all ambiguous names were checked. The count was restricted to the graduate divisions,* but those women who were in the graduate catalogs although they held appointments in the College were listed separately. Unfortunately, time did not allow the examination of other departments, the careers of women in the College, or the employment patterns of men on the faculty. But the data on women in graduate social science faculties, while they hold absolutely only for those departments, can still give us some insight into the general careers of faculty women at the University.
The employment patterns of women show several striking characteristics, which a perfunctory examination of the catalogs does not show for male faculty.

1. Few women are hired, and few stay more than the length of one appointment (three years).
2. The first appointment is usually that of Instructor or Lecturer (a nonfaculty appointment), rather than the typical position of Assistant Professor.
3. Those who stay generally remain in untenured positions for an abnormally long time.
4. Those who, become full professors do so by rising through "women's departments" or are brought in from other universities at a tenured position.
   

Not only do these patterns manifest themselves, but the "normal" university career is not found at all. Not a single woman in the graduate divisions of any of these six departments began her career here as a junior faculty member and rose, in that department, to become a full professor. While not all men follow this pattern either, and many move around quite a bit during their careers, it is safe to say that the number who do move up the academic ladder to full professor at the University of Chicago is considerably greater than zero.

My original investigation was confined to the Sociology Department during the last ten years. I suspected, and hoped to show, that the turnover rate of women was considerably higher than that of men. I could find no such pattern -- primarily because I could not find any women. Marlene Dixon was the first woman to hold a teaching position in the Sociology Department in 19 years. Her closest predecessor, Josephine Williams, was an Assistant Professor in 1950-51. A top Sociology graduate student in the forties, she had been given an Instructorship when she received her Ph.D. in 1947. She held this position for two years before being promoted to Assistant Professor. One year later she is listed in the catalogs as only a Research Associate, and the next year she left.
Her experience illustrates two of the common patterns of these six departments (see Appendix I for the other examples). Some women are appointed to lower positions, but virtually none stay, even as long as Josephine Williams. A woman's first appointment on receipt of the Ph. D. is usually that of Instructor or Lecturer. The first appointment of an overwhelming majority of the men is that of Assistant Professor. Some women prefer Lectureships, because it allows a more flexible teaching schedule. But the same can hardly be said of Instructorships, and it is difficult to believe that most women would not prefer to be Assistant Professors.
Marlene Dixon was only the fifth woman to hold a first appointment as Assistant Professor in the entire history of these departments. Of the other four, two stayed only a year (Florence Richardson, Psychology, 1921-22; and Anna Elonen, Psychology, 1949-50), one had worked elsewhere before coming to Chicago (Hanna Gray, History, 1962-) and the fourth held an Instructorship in the department of Medicine before being given a joint Assistant Professorship in History and Medicine (Ilza Veith, Medical History, 1952-63).
What happens to these women? After years of struggling for their Ph. D., do they get married and retire after their first teaching job? There is no way to trace those who left the University of Chicago, but those who stayed exhibit a pattern of their own. It is exemplified by Edith Abbott. She taught in Sociology from 1914 to 1920. After six years she had still not been promoted to Assistant Professor, so she switched to Social Service Administration. Eventually she became Dean of the School. SSA is one of those departments known as "women's departments." Whether this is because they are highly populated by women, often 100 percent, or because they are the only departments through which women can rise, one can only speculate. The fact is that it is only through these departments that women do rise to tenured positions in this University.
A good example of this phenomenon is Sophonisba Preston Breckinridge. In 1901 she received a joint Ph.D. in the Departments of Political Science and Economics, becoming the first woman to receive that degree from either of these departments. She had already become the first woman to be admitted to the Kentucky Bar and continued her legal education at the UC Law School, where she received her J.D. in 1904. While studying at the Law School, she held the position of Docent (somewhat akin to a Teaching Assistant) in the Department of Political Science. In 1905, the University offered her a faculty appointment. She now held doctorates in three fields, Political Science, Economics, and Law, but was she offered an appointment in any of these? No, Sophonisba Breckinridge became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Household Administration.
She had, nonetheless, a distinguished career. The listings of her publications in the Harper Library Card Catalog occupy 3/4 of an inch. She became a Professor of Social Economy in H.A and from this position was accepted as a guest to teach courses in Political Science -- her original field. She was also, at the time, a Dean of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy and was instrumental in having it incorporated into the University as the School of Social Service Administration in 1920. It was the first professional school of social work to be so affiliated with any University. After H.A. was abolished in the 1920's she became the Samuel Deutsch Professor of Public Welfare Administration in SSA She continued to teach courses for the Department of Political Science but never held an appointment there.
In her own department, H.A., she taught one of the few courses on women ever offered at this University. H.A. 21 was on "The Legal and Economic Position of Women." It was one of several academic courses of specific relevance to women taught in the "women's departments." When women's departments were abolished, courses on women, though they easily could have fit elsewhere, were abolished also. The Legal and Economic Position of Women is a perfectly legitimate course for such departments as sociology. economics, law or political science, but none of their (male) faculty were interested in this subject.
Although both Abbott and Breckinridge became full professors; neither of them was a professor in the six departments studied. However, five women have held full professorships in these -- three in economics, one in history, and one in psychology. They too exhibit a common pattern. Not a single one worked her way up through the ranks in these departments.
Three of them (Hazel Kyrk, Economics, 1914-1924; Margaret Reid, Economics, 1952-1962; and Helen Lois Koch, Psychology, 1947-1961), held joint appointments in Home Economics, another woman's department. Hazel Kyrk's career was similar to that of Abbott and Breckinridge. She began as an Assistant (a non-faculty teaching position below that of Instructor which no longer exists), in the Department of Economics - a position she held in 1914 and 1918. Then she transferred to Home Economics and eventually became a full professor. It was only in 1928 that she was given a joint appointment with her original department, which she held until her retirement in 1954.
Both Koch and Reid were brought in from other schools. They held joint appointments in Home Economics and Psychology or Economics respectively. Reid came from a long career at Iowa and the University of Illinois to be a full professor here. Koch gave up a full professorship in 1929 at the University of Texas for an Associate Professorship here in the Department of Home Economics. She became a full professor in 1942 and in 1947 was given a joint appointment with Psychology. Only after Home Economics was abolished in the mid-fifties did these women hold full appointments.
Dorothy Brady (Economics 1957-59) and Bessie Louise Pierce (History 1930-63) were likewise brought in from the outside. Brady came as a full professor and stayed only two years. Pierce gave up a tenured position at the University of Iowa to work here on a special project writing a multi-volume history of Chicago. Although her first appointment was as Associate Professor, it was a term appointment held without tenure. After four years she was given tenure and after twelve years was promoted to Full Professor. She is now retired but still working on her monumental city history.