THE ROADS TAKEN: CONTEMPORARY WOMEN'S VOICES
By Michael J. Bandler
Changes in the law, politics and society have had significant impact on women's lives today, including their choices of careers. Not all of the battles for parity, equal opportunity and enlightened attitudes have yet been won. Still, identifiable progress has occurred, with the expectation of more to follow. In the following reflections, three women in diverse fields offer insights into their own journeys.
DONNA AUGUSTE -- cofounder,
chairman and chief executive officer of Freshwater
Software, a computer firm in Boulder, Colorado.
My minority status is both gender- and ethnic-related. As a female from both African American and Native American roots, I became involved, in high [secondary] school, in a San Francisco- area program called MESA -- Math, Engineering and Science Achievement. It was instrumental in that participants became introduced, on a practical level, to careers in science and engineering, which had been my dream.
Until that point, and even afterwards, I had experienced various forms of gender and ethnic bias. I can't separate the two. Primary school teachers discouraged me from participating in science fairs, and university professors told me they didn't want me in their engineering program for fear I'd contribute to diluting the quality of education -- even though I had come out of high school with a 4.0 [A] grade-point average. But I just dealt with it, on a case-by-case basis.
I sense the picture is changing these days, on all levels of education. Certainly there are more women in science and technology. It helps to have women on faculties, on admission boards, on employment review panels. Let me give an example of one professional experience I had at a company at which I was employed which underscores this.
I was meeting with a group of my fellow senior executives, reviewing the performances of the senior managers of our division, one by one. For the first time in the company's history, women -- there were two of us -- were part of that discussion. When we came to consider one female manager, a senior executive suggested that she shouldn't be evaluated for promotion at that time because she was about to go on maternity leave, and that it would be better to review her case on her return. "When women have babies, sometimes they don't come back with the same commitment they had before," he said. I immediately pointed out the bias -- the fact that there had never been any discussion as to whether impending fatherhood would affect the commitment of any male executive up for promotion. To their credit, everyone at the table -- including the person who'd made the suggestion -- agreed with me, and proceeded with the evaluation. What had changed? In the past, no woman had been part of the discussion to question anything. Now, our point of view had been incorporated.
Although I've experienced bias, I think the situation is evolving. As chief executive officer of my own company, my leadership role influences our corporate culture. But I also feel that a young girl growing up today has a better chance of avoiding bias, even though it still exists. And where it does, networking helps. I'm working with an organization called Girls, Inc., a national group here in the United States. They have one program, for example, called SMART -- Science, Math and Related Technology. I spent some time at their Denver [Colorado] chapter, speaking about creating science and technology programs for girls in that community -- letting them get their hands on soldering irons and oscilloscopes and the like at a very young age. I want young girls who are interested in these subjects to be able to maintain that interest, even when they're discouraged from it. I want every child who has passion about something -- technology, or math, or science, or art, or music -- to be encouraged to develop their passion, without restraint, without barriers, without biases.
I have had the chance to see the advantages enjoyed by the upcoming generation through my youngest sister, Gaberial, who's 17. There are three others besides us -- one is a nurse, another is a postal employee, and the third is in marketing and communications. Gabby is interested in architecture, but in any event, she has been around professional women all her life. She's visited our work environments and has heard us talk about our jobs. She's never had a question unanswered, because of all the resources at her disposal. She's experienced bias -- as early as the sixth grade, classmates discouraged her from taking an interest in math and science. But she deals with it through our experiences -- through her family history.
Recently, public television was preparing a miniseries on
people of color in entrepreneurial
technical roles. I was included. As part of following me around
for a couple of weeks, the
production crew visited my parents. While they were there, they
saw Gabby repair a broken
robotics arm that was part of a science kit of hers. She
operated the soldering iron as I coached
her along. Afterwards, Gabby told me that what interested her
the most was the fact that the
interviewers thought that what she was doing was exceptional. In
her mind, when something
breaks at home, she fixes it, sometimes checking with me how to
do it. That's the routine. That's
the norm. But it definitely wasn't the norm for me, when I was
her age.
DR. SHEILA E. WIDNALL -- Secretary of the
U.S. Air Force.
My childhood home in Tacoma, Washington, sat right under the approach to a U.S. Air Force base. As a youngster, I looked up from my back yard as planes flew over and, in awe, I felt the power of the engines and the fascination of flight.
I really think I've been the most fortunate of people. Back in high school, I remember having participated in a science fair, and showing up at the college recruitment night when the alumni regional scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was to be awarded. I couldn't help noticing that I was the only girl among 20 guys. But then I won. I still didn't think it was too uncommon, but when I arrived at MIT, I realized that I was one of 20 women in a freshman [first-year] class of about a thousand students.
I didn't think much about bias and discrimination, though, because MIT was a very supportive institution. Others were not that encouraging. I interviewed at one prominent university and was asked, `why should we admit you? You'll just get married, have children and quit.' I was insulted. At the time, another school I might have liked to attend, the California Institute of Technology, wasn't even accepting women, so it wasn't an option.
MIT was enlightened. It admitted its first women in the mid-19th century. The faculty I encountered urged me on, encouraging me to shoot higher than I might have without that support. The timing was perfect, too. Engineering was booming as a profession, and those in the field were looking for new recruits among students. There was particular receptivity to women, since they weren't normally expected to enter the field. I was in my second year at MIT when the Russians launched Sputnik into orbit. Right away, educators and the government began emphasizing the math-science-engineering disciplines in high school and college. They saw it as the engine of economic growth and extremely important to national security.
By the late 1960s, when I was already on the faculty, the affirmative action executive order applying to universities who were federal contractors had been issued. It was enormously beneficial to women, and MIT responded vigorously in a positive way, with a substantial institutional commitment and a no- nonsense pragmatic approach towards backing the goals of the mandate.
When I was appointed a teaching assistant as a post-doctoral candidate in 1964, I don't believe men saw women as potential permanent faculty members. But then, the two professors who had been my advisers on my thesis and in professional guidance departed the school, leaving a gaping hole in the faculty. I was asked to stay. Out of that came the building of a career, and becoming part of the fabric of the senior faculty. I was the first woman chair of the faculty -- and probably the youngest.
During my years at MIT, I was one of those who, in a very pragmatic sense, was helping the school bring women into the student body and onto the faculty -- mentoring them so they'd maintain MIT's traditionally high standards. We had an active group of women on the faculty and the administration viewed us very favorably, because we were out to solve whatever problems the school encountered.
While I was at MIT, I kept in touch with what was happening in the aerospace industry through attendance at conferences. The numbers of women began increasing dramatically in the mid-1970s, when women represented 20 percent of those in the field. It was no longer surprising to participate in an industry meeting and find a number of young women there. It's an appealing and challenging field for women -- information-based and leading- edge. Change has always been a way of life in the aerospace industry, so it has meshed well with change as far as gender politics is concerned.
Now I'm part of government, and dramatic changes exist here as well. The current Department of Defense, for instance, has more women in senior positions than ever before. It wasn't mandated by law, but by individuals. President Clinton, and Defense Secretaries Les Aspin, William Perry and John Deutch said, `this is the way we're going to do it.' And the women who've come in are extraordinarily qualified.
At this point, about 25 percent of our new Air Force recruits
are women. They have career
opportunities in virtually everything the Air Force does. Less
than one percent of our career
fields are restricted -- ground combat is an example. Women are
flying F-15s and F-16s and
C-17s, big airplanes and small ones. They're repairing jet
engines, flying satellites and sitting
watch in missile silos. There's even a woman astronaut -- an Air
Force colonel -- in space today.
Our personnel exemplify the ability of women to perform the most
demanding jobs, and serve as
role models for what it means to be part of an organization --
any organization -- that allows you
to excel.
DEBORAH A. YOW -- Director of Athletics
of the University of Maryland, and an important voice on the
national level in intercollegiate athletics.
I come from a family steeped in the tradition of participation in sports -- the women as well as the men -- as players and coaches. My older sister Kay, who's headed the women's basketball program at North Carolina State University for 23 years, coached the Olympic women's basketball team to a gold medal in Seoul in 1988. Susan, my younger sister, has been a collegiate head coach at three institutions and now is assistant coach of a women's basketball team in a new professional league. My brother played football in college.
I was midway through college, playing varsity basketball, when Title IX [the section of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibiting discrimination based on gender in educational programs, including athletics, receiving U.S. Government funds] was passed. Susan, an extraordinary talent, a bit later was one of the first students to receive an athletic scholarship. Pragmatically, then, her college career was paid for, while I paid my own way -- through student loans and working the second shift at a supermarket. I finished paying off that debt when I was 28.
I coached women's basketball at three universities before going into athletic administration. I've been blessed in my career, as coach and director of athletics. But the fact is that when you are a member of a gender or racial minority, you live that life every day. Did I experience bias? Do I experience it? Yes. Do I pay much attention to it? No, I do not. It's so much a part of the fabric of the world that when you're a gender minority in an historically male culture, specifically athletics, that you just don't focus on it. Yes, an incident of bias registers mentally, but the way to survive, in part, and to excel is just to accept the fact that it's there, and go forward. You just learn to live that way.
When I was preparing to be interviewed for the position of athletic director (AD) at Saint Louis University in 1990, USA Today ran a short item on the four finalists -- the other three of whom were men. It happened I was at a conference at the time, and everyone there had read the article. Walking down the hallway to a business meeting, I was stopped on three separate occasions by men who were AD's at the time -- all friends of mine. Each delivered the same message: `I saw your name on the list of finalists. I care about you. Do not go for the interview. You're the token female in the pool. Don't let it be you. There's no way you're going to be hired.' They thought they were helping me, protecting me. When I told my husband about it, he got angry and said, `Have you ever considered yourself a token?' I said I hadn't. `Then why would you start today?' he asked. I got the job. Last year, after I'd moved to the University of Maryland, I saw one of the three men who'd advised me to pull out of the competition. He said, `You're doing a great job, Debbie, everywhere you go!' I felt good about that. It was his way of expiation for the attitude he'd conveyed years before.
I should mention what happened at the Saint Louis University interview itself. I came into the room, where a group of 14 grim-faced men sat in a semi-circle facing the door. There seemed to be no chair for me, so I thought I would do something to break the ice. I said, `Where's the hot seat?' I thought it would be a cute remark. One of them said, without cracking a smile, `Anywhere you sit.' They were dead serious. But an hour-and-a-half later, longer than they'd planned for the interview, they voted for me over the three men.
I'm pretty realistic. Once I'm in a job or situation, I determine that I will work harder and smarter, doing whatever it takes to insure that I will be able to meet or exceed the standards that are set for me in terms of performance, accountability and productivity. I am willing to do whatever it takes -- and if that means 12-hour days, that's what will happen. Now, if I ever reached the point where I say I can't deal with that, I would literally continue to meet the standard while looking for another job. But I will never fail.
Title IX has changed the way in which those of us in the business of athletics look at female participation in intercollegiate sports. Overall, the impact has been positive. We would not have made the progress we've made in terms of participation without it. It has been extremely valuable. I would add, though, that I am not a proponent of strict proportionality as defined by the percentage of men and women attending a particular institution -- which is one of the law's mandates. There's very little flexibility in that. I base things on logic. I'd like someone to explain to me the logic of saying that if 48 percent of our students at Maryland are female, then 48 percent of our student athletes should be female, and 48 percent of our athletic scholarships should go to women. I believe more in what I would call substantial proportionality -- that is, if you come within plus or minus seven percentage points, you'd be in compliance.
In general, though, Title IX has changed our culture. We have Mia Hamm, for example, who played soccer at the University of North Carolina, making national commercials for a shampoo. The law has changed society's perspective. It's that simple, and it's that significant. Traits that normally are attributed to women that are not necessarily positive -- weakness, frailness -- are going by the wayside. And they need to, because most women I know are operating successfully either as individuals -- responsible for their own well-being -- or as part of a couple, perhaps with children, where both adults are working.
The single most important benefit I've received from sports is
the opportunity to learn leadership
skills. It's vital for women to have that opportunity.
Leadership is not a gender issue.
U.S. Society & Values
USIA Electronic Journal, Vol. 2, No. 2, June 1997