Sharing the work: What my career and family taught me about breaking through (A talk by Myra Strober)
"A knowledge of history as detailed as possible is essential if we are to comprehend the present and be prepared for the future." -- Pearl S. Buck
The women on Stanford’s faculty now number close to 600, but that was not the case in the early 1970s, when Myra Strober became the first faculty member at the Graduate School of Business.
From the publisher: "Myra Strober became a feminist on the Bay Bridge, heading toward San Francisco. It is 1970. She has just been told by the chairman of Berkeley’s economics department that she can never get tenure. Driving home afterward, wondering if she got something out of the freezer for her family’s dinner, she realizes the truth: she is being denied a regular faculty position because she is a mother. Flooded with anger, she also finds her life’s work: to study and fight sexism, in the workplace, in academia, and at home.
"Strober’s generous memoir captures the spirit of a revolution lived fully, from her Brooklyn childhood (and her shock at age twelve when she’s banished to the women’s balcony at shul) to her groundbreaking Stanford seminar on women and work. Strober’s interest in women and work began when she saw her mother’s frustration at the limitations of her position as a secretary. Her consciousness of the unfairness of the usual distribution of household chores came when she unsuccessfully asked her husband for help with housework. Later, when a group of conservative white male professors sputtered at the idea of government-subsidized child care, Strober made the case for its economic benefits.
"In the 1970s, the term “sexual harassment” had not yet been coined. Occupational segregation, quantifying the value of work in the home, and the cost of discrimination were new ideas. Strober was a pioneer, helping to create a new academic field and founding institutions to establish it. But she wasn’t alone: she benefited from the women’s movement, institutional change, and new federal regulations that banned sex discrimination. She continues the work today and invites us to join her.
"Myra Strober is a labor economist. She is Professor (Emerita) at the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University, and Professor (Emerita) of Economics at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business (by courtesy). She is the coauthor of The Road Winds Uphill All the Way: Gender, Work, and Family in the United States and Japan (MIT Press).” She also founded what has become the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research.
We hope you can join us to learn more about the remarkable journey of one of Stanford's pioneering women faculty members as well as one of the first economists to research, write, and teach about the relationship between women and work.
After the reading and discussion, and during a reception, for those interested, Professor Strober will sign books, available for purchase.
Please also feel free to extend this invitation to any interested friends and colleagues.
This program is sponsored by the Faculty Women's Forum, Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Development & Diversity, and co-sponsored by the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, the Program in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the Program in Modern Thought & Literature, the Graduate School of Education, the Graduate School of Business, and the Pioneering Women Project of the Stanford Historical Society's Oral History Program.
