Gender discrimination in university hiring practices
Rorher explains how despite having earned her master's degree in history at Wake Forest University in 1969, she was unable to get a job teaching college. At Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina, Rorher was told explicitly by the history department that they were unlikely to hire her because she was a woman and that they rarely hired women faculty. Rorher found a similar gender disparity at Wake Forest University and decided not to seek employment there.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Grace Jemison Rohrer, March 16, 1989. Interview C-0069. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- KATHY NASSTROM:
-
If you don't mind saying, what impact did your husband's death have on
you in terms of what you pictured would happen next in your life and
your plans at that stage?
- GRACE JEMISON ROHRER:
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Well, what I did was go back to school and get my Masters in history. I
decided I wanted to go back to teaching even though in growing up,
women's role was very narrow, perceived very narrow. You could be a
teacher, a nurse, or a home economist. Those were usually the three
things. I was a natural teacher. So that was what I probably would have
been regardless of what would have been open. But at that time I had
taught third grade and fourth garde and pre-school. I decided I would
like to teach at the college level. I have a strong interest in history,
and I went back and got my Masters in history. However, in trying to
find a job in that, I was not very fortunate. I went to one
college - I've never revealed the name of this
college, but it was Guilford College, a Quaker college in
Greensboro - to explore the possibilities of
getting work there, and they said they'd never hired a woman in their
history department and probably I wouldn't stand much of a chance.
- KATHY NASSTROM:
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What year was this?
- GRACE JEMISON ROHRER:
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That was '69. I graduated right after that, and I went home and told my
father this. And he was flabbergasted. He may have, you know, at one
time felt that women's roles should be limited, I don't know. But I was
very special to my father, and to think that somebody
would turn down his daughter because she was a woman just had never, you
know, it just floored him. He said, "Well, maybe you'll have a
better chance at Wake Forest." That's where I went and got my
Masters at Wake Forest. But on graduation, we looked at the faculty
sitting out there, and probably not even a third of the faculty were
women, and he said afterwards, "I guess you wouldn't do any
better there."