Women Scholars, Social Science Expertise, and the State

Building on scholarship on academic women and the (gendered) institutional constraints they faced, this article explores different trajectories in the careers of academic women economists in the United States, and their efforts to pursue research, establish their authority and influence public policy. It argues that, despite the obstacles, such women were still able to use their new knowledge to influence the development of the welfare state. This study provides new insights into women’s efforts to pursue research and establish their authority, indicative of the interweaving of gendered conceptions of knowledge and research as well as work. It particularly highlights differences in institutional settings and in these women’s approaches to research, which are of broader relevance. Dzuback, Mary Ann. 2009. Women Scholars, Social Science Expertise, and the State in the United States. Women\u27s History Review 18 (1), 71-95

Berkeley Women Economists, Public Policy, and Civic Sensibility

Book chapter Berkeley Women Economists, Public Policy, and Civic Sensibility, from Civic and Moral Learning in America, edited by Donald Warren and John Patrick, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. From its formative years to the present, advocates of various persuasions have written and spoken about the country\u27s need for moral and civic education. Responding in part to challenges posed by B. Edward McClellan, this book offers research findings on the ideas, people, and contexts that have influenced the acquisition of moral and civic learning in the America

Creative Financing in Social Science: Women Scholars and Early Research

Book chapter Creative Financing in Social Science: Women Scholars and Early Research from Women and Philanthropy in Education, edited by Andrea Walton, published by Indiana University Press

Hutchins, Adler, and the University of Chicago: A Critical Juncture

As dean of Yale University\u27s Law School, Robert Hutchins stressed social science theory and research as central to the university\u27s work. Within a few years, as president of the University of Chicago, he abandoned the social sciences for philosophy and the great books. Hutchins\u27s conversion seems ironic because it took place at an institution renowned for the work of its faculty in social science theory and research. This article is an attempt to make sense of Hutchins\u27s shift in thinking at a critical juncture in his life and in the university\u27s histor

Professionalism, Higher Education, and American Culture: Burton J. Bledstein\u27s The Culture of Professionalism

Burton Bledstein classed his book The Culture of Professionalism with the work of the giants in American academik history. He suggested that his theory of the culture of professionalism ranked in significance with Frederick Jackson Turner\u27s frontier thesis, Charles A. Beard\u27s industrialization theories, and Perry Miller\u27s analysis of Puritanism. Bledstein\u27s fresh historical perspective on higher education and his skepticism regarding professional authority no doubt were shaped by his experiences at elite public and private institutions, the University of California at Los Angeles (B.A., 1959) and Princeton (Ph.D., 1967). He has spent his whole professional life at one public institution, the University of Illinois at Chicago, with brief interludes provided by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (1972-73) and the University of Chicago (1977-78), the latter in recognition of his book

Gender and the Politics of Knowledge

Contentious public debates about women\u27s rational and moral capacity circulated during the European Enlightenment at the same time that science was emerging as a dominant mode of inquiry. As historian Karen Offen argues in European Feminisms, these debates preoccupied both men and women intellectuals of the middling and upper classes and represented a pivotal moment in the three-century campaign to rearticulate a politics of knowledge proclaiming women as deserving as men of formal schooling at all levels. Disputes about women\u27s capabilities emerged in the context of efforts to redefine the rights and privileges of men, of male intellectuals to reassert male dominance over and control of females\u27 access to intellectual participation as well as the craft guilds associated with women\u27s work, and of men and women to consider the meaning and structure of social institutions and social systems

Gender, Professional Knowledge, and Institutional Power: Women Social Scientists and the Research University

Although US universities in the early twentieth century offered the promise of meritocratic entry into the academic profession via the graduate training they provided, they did not fulfill that promise for women. Most women who trained for the PhD in social sciences—the focus of this chapter—and who remained in academia could only find positions in colleges. There they pursued scholarship, teaching, and service, the three central activities of the professional scholar, but found themselves restricted by the expectations of large teaching loads, limited resources, and lack of opportunity to train graduate students in these largely teaching institutions. Yet even in these environments, women social scientists created thriving careers, pursued research, located financial support for their research, and in the end transformed the colleges to be more receptive to faculty and student scholarship. In contrast, the few women scholars who were hired by universities as teachers and/or scholars had to negotiate carefully these institutional cultures, which were not by and large hospitable to women researchers, in an effort to obtain the recognition and support their male counterparts routinely received. The focus of this chapter is on women who, in the 1920s and 1930s, did make a place for themselves as researchers in American universities, how they accomplished this, and what they accomplished. Book chapter Gender, Professional Knowledge, and Institutional Power: Women Social Scientists and the Research University, published in The \u27Woman Question\u27 and Higher Education: Perspectives on Gender and Knowledge Production in America, ed. Ann Mari May (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2008)

Women and Social Research at Bryn Mawr College, 1915-1940

In 1911 M. Carey Thomas, president of Bryn Mawr College, faced a golden opportunity. An alumna of the college had died suddenly, leaving Bryn Mawr its largest gift since Joseph Wright Taylor\u27s initial endowment for the establishment of the college. Emma Carola Woerishoffer\u27s unrestricted donation provided Thomas unaccustomed freedom to expand Bryn Mawr\u27s curriculum. In 1915 Thomas used a large portion of the bequest to establish the Graduate Department of Social Economy and Social Research for the training and certification of social workers and for the master\u27s and doctoral education of social researchers. Bryn Mawr\u27s department and program were unusual, as training schools for social workers were run largely by charity organization societies. The department\u27s singularity was derived from its location within an academic institution and its determination to provide women the opportunity to pursue research in the social sciences