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Women students were allowed into Harvard classrooms for the first time
in... 1943! But, even after that, the diploma for women was from Radcliffe
College, nicknamed "The Harvard Annex", until 1963!
In the 50s, Barbara Bergmann says that the doctorate classes she attended
were identical for men and women, but the Ph D for women was officially
from Radcliffe. She notes that it must have been too expensive to maintain
separate classes for men and women at the graduate level even at the time
of Elisabeth Boody Schumpeter and Elisabeth W Gilboy. (The Radcliffe
website says that in 1963 "Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
is opened to women and Radcliffe Graduate School closes"; but I dont know
what exactly this means, when contrasted with first-hand information from
Barbara Bergmann)
Barbara Bergmann was appointed Instructor at Harvard Economics Department,
after completing her Ph D in 1958. (In 1952, when she arrived, women were
not allowed to be teaching fellows). She thinks that she was not the first
to get such a degree: Alice Rivlin and Soo Chaung Kahn may have got their
Ph D degree before her.
Anne Carter was the first woman assistant professor of economics at Harvard
in the late sixties. (She was by then senior enough for a higher post: she
was a Senior Research Associate, Director of Research of the Harvard
Economic Research Project, established by Wassily Leontief; and had a
rather respectable CV, so it was impossible for John Dunlop, then Professor
of economics, to claim, as he usually did, that there were no suitable
women to appoint).
The first tenured female professor was... appointed much later; probably
Claudia Goldin, in the late eighties.
I find all this rather shocking. Allen's affirmation "Harvard was not very
broad-minded about hiring women" (_Opening Doors_, vol. II, p. 30), talking
about Elisabeth Boody (later E. B. Schumpeter) in 1934, clearly fell short.
The same struggle took place in England half a century before. Even in
Francoist Spain, conservative women were proud of attending to University
classes in the 40s. So, my question is, is this a Harvard or Boston
peculiarity, or were most Universities at United States similar in their
policy about hiring women?
Thanks to Anne Carter and Barbara Bergmann for their invaluable first-hand
information, and to Robert Dimand, Johanna Bockman and John Reeder for
their kind and useful information.
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