“The Hand that Rocks the Cradle Should Rock the U. of C.”: The Faculty Wife and the Feminist Era

This article analyzes struggles among women at the University of Chicago to rearticulate their role on campus in the 1960s and 1970s. In those years, feminist politics generated a controversy between female students and instructors who sought access to the university on their own terms and the faculty wives who proclaimed the value of their supportive labors. The wives argued that their unpaid work for their families and the university earned them a respected role on campus. Feminists countered that women should instead seek recognition as men’s peers. Administrators chafed against the new climate of women’s liberation. In the end, feminists won new access to academic jobs but were frustrated in their campaigns for more systemic changes. This partial success helped to remake the domestic labor that facilitates academic careers as a private concern, thus marginalizing the reproductive labor that still typically falls to women—even those who teach and study alongside of men.