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127 c h a p t e r f o u r Science and the Second Wave In October 1964, the Association of Women Students of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sponsored a two-day symposium on American women in science and engineering. While “[a] conference at MIT on science and engineering is hardly a novelty,” quipped the institute’s president, Julius Stratton, “a symposium about women, on a campus . . . thought to be a man’s preserve, may well have appeared . . . as something remarkable.”1 This observation was confirmed by the nearly 900 participants, whose attendance well surpassed the expectations of the planning committee. Initially conceived as a local gathering to discuss the career problems of MIT “coeds,” the symposium drew 260 student delegates from 140 colleges, as well as 600 college deans, guidance counselors, scientists, high school students, and members of the Cambridge community. As the guest list expanded , so did the organizers’ objectives. According to conference chair and MIT senior Carol Van Aken, what began as a “modest informational effort ” quickly became a major investigation of scientific careers for women.2 The goals of the symposium, as outlined by Van Aken, were threefold. First, organizers aimed to acquaint female students with the myths and realities surrounding scientific work for women in the hope of encouraging them in these fields. Second, they sought to reveal to employers and educators some of the concerns harbored by female students and to stimulate shared solutions. Finally, organizers wished “to attract the favorable attention of industry, other educational institutions, and the public at large . . . to the desirability of decreasing the present barriers that now prevent maximum utilization of the abilities of qualified women.”3 This interest in expanding opportunities for women in science by drawing on broader manpower concerns was well-worn territory for many program speakers, such as Polly Bunting and Lillian Gilbreth, who continued to be active in professional circles at the age of eighty-six. Other panelists, such as Mina Rees, who had worked at the Office of Scientific Research and Development during World War II and at the Office of Naval Research in the immediate postwar period, echoed this language as well. In her current position as dean of graduate studies at the City University of New York, Rees 128 | Science and the Second Wave expressed a desire to encourage female mathematicians “particularly in view of the shortage” and mentioned how, to this end, she had made financial aid for child care available to her female students.4 Columbia University physicist Chien-Shiung Wu adopted a similar approach in her remarks urging the acceptance of female scientists more generally. The Chinese-born wife and mother had completed her Ph.D. at Berkeley in 1940 before joining the Manhattan Project at Columbia in 1944. After the war, she stayed on at Columbia as part of a three-person research team that in 1956 shattered the principle of parity conservation. The two men on the team won the Nobel Prize for this achievement, while Wu was passed over. At the MIT symposium , she called for recognition of women’s scientific abilities and pointed out the irony that “in a time when we cry for the lack of manpower in science and technology, we find that women’s enrollment in science remains low and women employed in the field of science are still few.” Wu, who was a contemporary of Virginia Gildersleeve, evidently shared her disdain for the “terrible waste of potential talent” arising from the marginalization and mistreatment of female scientists.5 Although many speakers highlighted “manpower” issues, some embraced more explicitly feminist language, thus signaling an important shift. The clearest example of this development was a presentation by sociologist Alice S. Rossi, who gave a meticulously documented paper on the barriers to women’s scientific participation. While Rossi’s extensive research on sex roles and occupational choice provided most of her evidence, her broader interest in these subjects came from personal experience. After completing her Ph.D. at Columbia in 1957, she combined raising three young children with a series of lectureships and research associate positions at the University of Chicago, where her husband taught sociology and directed the National Opinion Research Center. Although her nonfaculty status did not bother her initially, her outlook changed in the early 1960s when a male faculty member deliberately exploited her situation. Because university regulations prohibited research associates from submitting grant proposals in their own names, Rossi enlisted his support in applying to the...

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