Imagine you are extremely skilled, work hard, play by the rules, even when they are not fair, and then the major obstacle in your life is the assumption that someone makes about the choices you will make in the future. That does not seem fair.
Meet Dr. Jill Tarter, who earned her Bachelor of Engineering Physics Degree with Distinction from Cornell University and her master’s degree and a Ph. D. in Astronomy from the University of California, Berkeley. By all measures, an intelligent, successful professional who almost got her Cornell scholarship taken away because she planned to marry. The granting institution assumed that societal stereotypes about women meant she would leave and have babies, so she would not make a good investment as a scientist.
Fortunately, for Jill, a male professor advocate went to bat for her and against the unfairness. She kept her scholarship. She did marry and went on to get her PhD in a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) field.
Tarter has wide recognition in the scientific community, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from Women in Aerospace, two Public Service Medals from NASA, Chabot Observatory’s Person of the Year award (1997), and more. In 2004, Time Magazine named her one of the Time 100 most influential people in the world, and in 2005 Tarter was awarded the Carl Sagan Prize for Science Popularization at Wonderfest, the biannual San Francisco Bay Area Festival of Science.
I was moved by her story when I saw this clip from the organization Big Think, a site that publishes interviews and round table discussions with experts from a wide range of fields. It addresses her career path and what almost did not come to be.
Tarter shares that as a young woman at Cornell, she, as a female student, was locked in the dorms at 10 pm and the doors did not open until 6 am. The implication was that her male engineer degree counterparts studied together to help each other while she had to figure it out formulas on her own. She was on the Dean’s list each semester and she knew then that she wanted to pursue her advanced degree in science, even after marriage.
In the video, she shares that the company that sponsored her scholarship said with her pending marriage, she was not taking her education seriously, and they were not going to invest in someone who was going to go off and become a housewife and have babies. She attributes keeping the scholarship to Dean Corson of the Cornell College of Engineering. In the video, Tarter says, “I don’t know what he said to them, but I kept my scholarship.”
A Journey of the Times and Male Advocacy
Tarter was born the same year as my own mom, and while Mom is no longer on this earth, I do remember her sharing stories of how stereotypes held a lot of women back from pursuing dreams from sports to careers in science and other male-dominated professions.
Dr. Tarter is an amazing scientist, wise before her time. I would like to meet her to hear more firsthand about trail blazing in a male-dominated profession. I also wish I knew what Dean Corson said to help keep her scholarship.
Dale. R Corson, was inaugurated as the President of Cornell in 1969, the year I was born. He led the university through the final years of the Vietnam War and the associated student activism. His bio credits him for greatly improving the status of women on campus during his presidency. Corson joined the Cornell staff as an assistant professor of physics. In 1956 he was named chairman of the physics department and became dean of the College of Engineering in 1959. Corson earned a number of accolades himself over his tenure and lived to be 98 years old.
Crushing the Zero-Sum Game Mentality
What I like about Tarter’s story and the interaction with Corson as a Dean is the narrative of male allyship before it was a term. When Tarter brought her concerns to Corson, it seems he actively listened and then advocated for her success. She attributes keeping her scholarship to his actions in the form of a phone call to the sponsoring company.
As Corson has passed away, I can’t ask him what that secret phone call conversation entailed or his motivation to speak out on her behalf. I can only guess, based on interviews I did with males from corporations, ranging from managers on the rise to C-Suite executives and former CEOs for my book Men-In-The-Middle: Conversations to Gain Momentum with Gender Equity’s Silent Majority.
First, Corson was a father of four children, including three sons and a daughter. Consistent with research, men I interviewed that had mothers, daughters or wives who were navigating the waters of professional organizations tend to be more aware of the challenges women face. Next, Tarter showed talent. She has been on the Dean’s list, making good grades; perhaps he believed like many men I spoke with that talent is talent, regardless of gender, race, or any other differences. In another possibility, maybe he acknowledged the need for diverse representation in the field to advance the science. Whatever the reason, his advocacy behavior in the backdrop of the late 1950s or early 1960s would have been going against the norm.
I can only assume, again, that Corson believed that creating a win-win environment – enabling men and women to lead in science careers – would be beneficial for the field. During my interviews with men, I heard more of the Zero-Sum Game mentality, the idea that if one party wins, another loses. While they did not articulate it this way, some men did say that they lost out on a job or promotion because they were told that with Diversity & Inclusion leading the way, the company had to hire the female candidates. This position is not good for men and women or even the value of Diversity & Inclusion as a business lever to drive value.
An Anomaly of the Times or Still True?
While I totally recognize we have come a long way since the 1950s and even 1960s, and it is why I enjoy hearing stories from Tarter and other women who faced challenges--family and babies are still career blockers for women, whether they plan to have them or not.
When I interviewed a successful male engineer for my book, he said he still hears men in the hiring process say things like, well, she is great, but just when we train her in the company way, she will leave us, have babies, and not return. This dad of three amazing daughters finally decided to challenge his male leader chain-of-command when he said, “Look our overall retention for all engineers is X. If we hired this woman, and she left, would we really be worse off than we are today?”
I worked as a communication professional in a large manufacturing plant when I had my first job. I worked up to baby delivery day and told my boss, the plant manager, that I would be back in six weeks. At five weeks, he called my house, not to say congratulations, but to ask if I would be coming back to work when I said I would. I remember feeling dumfounded by the call, as I had day care lined up, and my spouse and I arranged for him to take two weeks of leave after my leave time was up. Maybe my boss had been burned in the past or maybe he expected me to say no, I am staying home. That was 28 years ago now, and I still remember that call.
At that same company, we interviewed a young couple who worked at another location. She was an engineer and thought of quite highly by her former bosses; he worked in the quality department. The company had a policy to hire trailing spouses in cases of career relocation. The leadership team was aware that she was pregnant, not from the candidate but from other people who had worked with her. After the interview, a male leader I totally admired said I don’t know if I can hire her as she was not honest with me about her pregnancy. I explained to him, that he could not ask her about that, and I would not have offered either if I was interviewed. Pregnancy is considered a medical condition, no different than a medical procedure for a male, and that is protected.
Again, in both cases, I cannot tell you what was on the minds of these men, both people I had worked with and admired, and both shocked me with this behavior. Furthermore, when I interviewed men for Men-In-The-Middle, a few brought up pregnancy and promotions. One man said, in the confines of an anonymous, one-on-one interview: “It is really not fair; I mean I would not be promoted if I took time off work to raise a family.” During these interviews I was more like a researcher, looking for the reason why men were thinking a certain way, even if they did not speak about it at the office.
Momentum Gaining Conversations
I am passionate about conversations and dialogue that help break stereotypes and biases and advance social issues. I appreciated the men who were willing to have a conversation about gender equity, the challenges, the breakdowns and what we need to do to make progress. When we get at the root cause, in this case what men really think, we can address the real issues.
In the case of Jill Tarter, scientist extraordinaire, the organization told her outright that they did not want to invest in someone who would leave science behind to have babies. They wanted to invest in female scientists, and they assumed that a woman who was going to get married would not take the field seriously enough. Whether we think that is fair or not, as least she knew what she was up against, and she had an influential male ally who helped sway the company to a different outcome.
The examples I shared from the 1990s, early 2000s and then even 2020’s include more subtle inferences; nonetheless, however, the opinion remained about young women being committed to their profession when family and career loomed. This is why I advocate for raising examples like the one from Jill Tarter and her college experience. Ask yourself, what would you have done as a leader? Where could bias be entering into the situation? How can we become more informed so that we can tap into the entire talent pool on a regular basis? How can we all continue the legacy of Dr. Corson?
There is a win-win, and not just for women. Gender equity is not a woman’s issues, but a leadership issue.
Let’s have a conversation.
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