Interviews by Bonnie Spanier, 1912-1998 (inclusive), 1979-1988 (bulk)

Scope and Contents

Includes re: lack of female role models; challenges of balancing work and motherhood and other difficulties of being a woman in scientific field; impact of women's movement on her; women in science committing suicide; feelings about other scientists; continues on T-462.22.

Scope and Contents Includes re: education and research interests; husband's encouragement and support early in career; research project re: comparing careers and recognition of ca.100 women who earned PhDs in biological sciences prior to ca.1940 to those of 200 men who earned degrees from same universities; studying contributions of women to various biological fields, including women without college degrees; encouraging high school girls to consider careers in science; courses Brown taught and the lack of...

Scope and Contents

Includes re: Brown's feeling that women would do better at smaller institutions; pressures of finding funding; balancing having children with career; importance of understanding men's careers as well as understanding women's, e.g. why certain men are not promoted and what that signifies re: their being on the "periphery."

Scope and Contents Includes re: science and feminism; identity as black person; parents' telling her people might want to stop her due to her being black but no one warning her about people stopping her because she was a woman; experience at Spelman College including marginalization of students studying engineering; boyfriend telling her "you can't be a woman and a scientist;" realizing her race and gender were real issues in her career and this sparking her interest in feminism; raising issues with sexism and...

Scope and Contents

Includes re: women and science; being an advocate for women; research on black women in science; goal of black women's education being to produce teachers, not scientists.

Scope and Contents Hopkins's education as scientist; encouragement by professor James Watson and mother's expectation that she would do "something"; noting that male mentorship is vital due to the lack of women in positions of power; noting that it would not have been possible for her to have children and her current job; her experiences with the one black man in her lab at MIT (he had to move five times in a year due to harassment; she notes this makes it impossible to do high powered research, other...

Scope and Contents Includes re: scientific development and influences; experiences at Radcliffe/Harvard; initially only accepted at a women's medical school which she had no interest in attending (as she had found experiences at Radcliffe degrading); reason for marrying at age 18; balancing home and work and concept of hiring home help; coming to understand women's movement; different standards by which male and female scientists are judged; sexism at Harvard; her feeling her career path is not different from...

Scope and Contents

Includes re: feminist perspectives and critiques in science; teaching classes featuring talk about race, class, sex; reproductive technologies; domestic science movement and how they defined the word "science"; genes and gender; effect of feminist critique on scientific establishment.

Scope and Contents Includes re: gender having nothing to do with decision to study physics; deciding when twelve she was going to be psychoanalyst; becoming interested in science in college; discovering culture of being a woman in physics when studying at Harvard: conscious that all the great physicists there were men and that they had very limited personal lives, making her wonder if she could marry and be a physicist; being told she could not be a woman physicist (and that physics was dead); feminism and...

Scope and Contents

Includes re: work no longer including psychoanalytic element; interest in ideology; women doing work similar to Keller and differences between her work and theirs; interest in working inside mainstream establishment; re: Barbara McClintock.

Scope and Contents Includes conclusion of T-462.30: Nancy Hopkins re: changing place of women in science; Spanier re: men and women's different opinions of Barbara McClintock; Spanier on physiological effects of poverty and racism; Lowe interview: Spanier's ideas for book; Lowe describing her identical twin sister as a "defrocked chemist;" started research in chemistry again (after doing none for some time) about 5 years before interview; considering feminist work more important than scientific work;...

Scope and Contents

Includes re: early belief in United States as best of all possible worlds; sister becoming radicalized before her; moving into women's studies/feminism and identifying with movement; growing conviction that world needed to change and that what one does can matter; Science for the People; involvement in Freda Salzman tenure case and subsequent falling out with her; view of various threads of feminism; advice for young women wanting to go into science; redefining notion of success.

Scope and Contents Includes re: Ramaley originally being interested in medical science/school and discovering that she liked diagnosis but not treatment; opting to study anatomy and reproductive biology; limited number of women in school; sexist comments but did not think too much about gender issues; support of other female student; marrying while working on dissertation; further experiences which raised her consciousness (being blamed for everything that went wrong in lab); becoming aware of inequalities...

Scope and Contents Includes re: becoming feminist and regarded as "harridan"; women's bitterness and anger towards men; noting that lots of boys do like smart girls; marriage as watershed moment and need for husband to have investment in wife's success; feeling job options would be better with college degree; beginning college as math major; taking science class from gym teacher, then another (female) teacher teaching the class and Ramey becoming interested in science; no science jobs available and becoming...

Scope and Contents Includes re: when she was in third grade both she and her brother said they wanted to be scientists, response was "Fine, Jonathan can go to med school and be a doctor, and you can be a nurse," and when she protested being told she could be a lab technician; happy childhood as tomboy; going to Syracuse University on scholarship and finding many students there not serious and having trouble getting them involved in social/political issues; transferring to University of Chicago for senior year...

Scope and Contents Includes re: Radcliffe fellowships and low rate of scientists accepted; change of status at Harvard from faculty wife to graduate student; timing of Raper getting her PhD; attitudes towards hiring women; women's responsibility to children, taking time off to care for them and then not being able to "catch up"; finding boy scouts more interesting than girl scouts; wondering if male domination is not covering up fact that women have many advantages, including be able to bear children; young...

Scope and Contents Includes Villars identifying self as associate professor of psychology who teaches psychobiology; studying biological determinism; what feminist science looks like; research interests grew out of childhood fascination with women's issues; becoming aware of sexism and racism on campus when in graduate school and difficulty in talking about this with anybody; most faculty members feeling that it was wrong to take a teaching job as you should do research instead: one faculty member encouraged...