Catherine Maley encourages female faculty to share their past struggles
One of the important moments for the incoming female faculty during the early 1970s occurred when Catherine Maley prompted established female faculty to share the struggles they had survived.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Margaret Anne O'Connor, July 1, 1987. Interview L-0031. 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
As a matter of fact, I remember one wonderful meeting, I
wish you could find the tapes that were recorded then. I'm
pretty sure that they tape recorded the meeting. Catherine Maley, when
she was putting together her first year's report, and this
might have been in the spring of 1973, had a meeting open to the general
faculty and asked the question, "What do you think the
situation of faculty women is on this campus?" I sat there and
I was absolutely amazed. Women who I still tremendously admire, Sara
Immerwahr in art and Berthe Marti in classics, very
"conservative" women, got up and, one at a time, said
what their history had been at the University--how difficult it had been
in the earlier years to begin and how slow recognition came. Here I was
listening to two women, Sara Immerwahr and Berthe Marti, who are
internationally renowned scholars, who had taken three, four times as
long as their male counterparts to achieve recognition here. Well,
that's Sara Immerwahr. Berthe Marti, as a matter of fact, had
been at Bryn Mawr and was recognized as a full professor before she
came, but she could still say, "Yes, we have to do something
for women." I remember Berthe Marti, of all
people, starting a petition around to get the Morehead Program to give
Morehead Scholarships to women, and that was quite late in that process.
I think that the movement turned a lot of very unlikely women into
activists, and that meeting really opened my eyes.