THE CENTER FOR |
vom atts Newsletter

The City University Graduate Center

33 West 42 Street, New York City 10036 212 790-4435

Vol. I, No. 9 June, 1980

WORK IN PROGRESS

MAKING THE INVISIBLE VISIBLE: INFORMAL INFLUENCES

IN THE CAREERS OF FEMALE AND MALE PHYSICIANS

In 1975, in a review of the literature on women and research in medical sociol-
ogy, I raised the question of why women doctors, elite by criteria of academic
achievement and social class, had made so little mark in the higher levels of
medical institutions. Their numbers admittedly have been limited by deliberate
medical-school quotas throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but even
as a minority, they have been underrepresented in the top ranks of medical schools,
research institutes, and hospital departments.

The explanations offered for their moderate achievements--professional and
family role conflict, low-prestige specialty choice, salaried practices, feminine
social-psychological characteristics--were inadequate or conflicting. For example,
it has been said that women physicians choose pediatrics and psychiatry because
they are nurturant and people-oriented, but choose pathology, a low-interaction
specialty, because it is easy to combine with family responsibilities. It has been
argued that women do not go into private practice because it is too time-consuming,
but Marilyn Heins and co-workers’ study of women physicans' productivity shows it
is 90 to 99 percent of male physicians’ professional commitment. Academic medicine
does not require entrepreneurial skills, but does require competitiveness, yet
women physicians with substantial achievements in research and numerous publications
are not chosen for prestigious leadership positions in academic medical institutions.

I argued that the damper on women physicians' upward mobility could probably
be located in the professional sponsorship-protege system, whereby established senior
doctors advance the careers of promising junior doctors through referrals, recom-
mendations, assistantships, and joint research. This process of apprenticeship and
tracking has been shown to be of major significance in shaping the careers of male
physicians in private practice and in academic medicine. However, while there are
studies showing the effects of informal discriminatory practices used against women
in medical school, there are no studies of the informal influences on the careers
of women physicians comparable to the major studies of male physicians’ careers.

The aim of my current research is to provide comparable data on the informal
influences in female and male physicians' careers. The data consist of taped interviews
with 68 physicians affiliated with a prestigious medical center. The sample consists
of 34 male and female internists, ranging in age from 30 to 79. The physicians are
in a variety of sub-specialties, and have had various combinations of professional
work--private practice, clinical research, and institutional health services. The
majority are Caucasian, but for the purpose of probing the effects of other discrim-
inatory characteristics, non-Caucasians and foreign medical school graduates were
alse interviewed. The sample also contains 26 physicians who are married to phys-
icians. This subsample will provide additional data on the informal influences of
physician husbands and wives on each other's careers.

The interview data are from physicians in metropolitan and suburban practices
who are affiliated with a prestigious medical center, and are therefore generalizable
only to relatively elite doctors. A subsequent stage of this research will utilize
the 1976 data from the Association of American Medical Colleges Longitudinal Study


of the Class of 1960, which consists of a national sample of female and male phys-
icians in a variety of specialties and practice settings.

The completed research should indicate the significant informal influences
that continue to shape the careers of female and male physicians at all levels, but
particularly pinpoint the factors that have kept highly qualified women physicians
out of the top ranks of the medical profession since World War II. Such knowledge
should enable the women physicians (and other women professionals) now being trained
in larger numbers than in the past to identify and counteract the potential hidden
barriers to their future advancement.

In addition, the study will add to the growing body of evidence that invisible
barriers strewn in the informal organization of work still keep even the most highly
qualified, competent, and accomplished women out of the top ranks of almost every pro-
fession and prestigious occupation in the United States, as documented by Rosabeth
Moss Kanter's study of large-scale corporations, Cynthia Epstein's study of law,
Barbara Reskin's study of science, and Jessie Bernard's study of universities.

Judith Lorber
Associate Professor, Brooklyn College

Current Center Activities

This issue of the Newsletter will be the last of the current academic year. On
behalf of the many readers who have already expressed their appreciation, I want to
take this opportunity to thank the Newsletter editor Martha Nelson for the terrific
job she has done.

Plans for activities at the Center in 1980~81 are well underway. Since we would
like to maintain a balance among the activities in the social sciences, arts and
humanities, we would welcome any and all ideas and suggestions for activities that
might facilitate work in the humanitfes here at the Center. In particular, we would
like to use our Fall lecture serfes to highlight femfntst scholarship in the humanities
and we would very much like your suggestions for possible speakers.

Several new Associates have joined the Center, and their projects promise to add
new dimension to our existing activities, as well as depth to research areas in which
we are already working.

The new RESEARCH ASSOCIATES are:

Rita Guttman, a Professor Emerita of the Biology Department of Brooklyn College, is
acting as the co-ordinator of a project to involve retired CUNY faculty and staff in
the work of the Center.

Anne Mulvey, a psychologist, has been investigating the relationship of stressful life
events, gender and age. She will continue her work on this topic and will work with
the Women and Health group.

Vivian Gornick, writer and editor, will be writing on the careers and lives of women in
science today, exploring and describing the emotional, intellectual and professional
experience of scientists who are women.

Margie Strosser, with Lisa Wilde, will direct a film entitled "Breasts: From Women's
Point of View". The film will examine the ways women see themselves and their cultural
image in specific relation to breasts.

Dennis Werner, an anthropologist, is working on a proposal to evaluate three major
theories about why people hold negative or stereotyped ideas about homosexuality.

Lisa Wilde, with Margie Strosser, will direct the the film "Breasts: From Women's

Point of View".

The new FACULTY ASSOCIATES include:

Barbara Katz-Rothman, an Assistant Professor at Baruch College, is examining the
differences between medical and woman-centered health care.

Judith Lorber, Associate Professor at Brooklyn College, will work on her project on
male and female physicians, which is described in detail in this Newsletter.



The VISITING SCHOLARS are:
Hema Goonatilake, of the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, is researching the topic
of women and the media.
Rhoda Unger, an Associate Professor at Montclair State College, is attempting to
delineate a theoretical framework for a feminist psychology of women and analyzing
the development of the field in terms of a sociology of knowledge approach.

We are delighted to welcome these new Associates and Visiting Scholars and we
look forward to the interchange of ideas and experience among all our members.

Mary Brown Parlee, Director
Center for the Study of Women and Sex Roles

WOMEN'S STUDIES: FALL, 1980

The interdisciplinary curriculum in Women's Studies at the Graduate Center

will include three courses for Fall, 1980. They are:

--Seminar in Sex Roles and the Environment, a three credit course, taught by
Susan Saegert on Wednesdays from 9:30-11:30.

~-Political Economy of Class, Race and Sex, a three-credit course, taught by
Professor Franklin on Tuesdays, from 6:30-8:30.

--Women and the Power Structure, a three credit course, taught by Cvnthia Epstein,
on Wednesdays, from 2-4 pm.
More information on the interdisciplinary curriculum in Women's Studies is available
in the Center, or from Rolf Meyersohn, Committee on Interdisciplinary Study and
Research, CUNY, 33 West 42nd Street, New York, 10036

WOMEN IN THE ARTS: COMPOSERS

On Friday, May 2, Women in the Arts: Composers was presented by the Center for
the Study of Women and Sex Roles in co-ordination with the Doctoral Program in Music.
The program was part of the series "American Women in the Arts", for which Rosette
Lamont is the general chair. Adrienne Block, chair for this session, is to be
congratulated for her skill in bringing together diverse talents, a multiplicity of
musical and theoretical viewpoints.

Three composers played their own works. Vivian Fine, who might be termed the
classicist of the group, works in a contemporary idiom that draws on the Western
traditions. Her "Lieder for Viola and Piano" played by Fine and Jacob Glick had
musical reference to Hugo Wolf's lieder and S&hubert's "Trout". The work ranged
from the subtlety of the "Lento" to the remarkable power of "In the Garden of the
Crucifixion." Meredith Monk's "Tablet", an extraordinary work for piano, three
voices, and two recorders was played and sung (and moved to-—-the composer is also
a choreographer) by Monk, Andrea Goodman and Monica Solem. The work, which uses
pre-verbal sounds instead of words, later prompted Elizabeth Wood, in a fascinating
series of questions during the panel discussion, to ask whether such an approach
was distinctively female. (No definite answer was reached.) The last performer,
Amina Claudine Myers, played her jazz compositions, "Farth" and "The Real Side"
works of enormous power that fight the usual stereotypes of female creativity——or
lack of it.

The panel discussion, moderated by Elizabeth Wood, undercut some commonly held
assumptions, such as the idea that there have been few women composers in the past.
Judith Tick, of Brooklyn College, discovered in her research that male historians
of music often leave out of their accounts the women composers who made a make on
their age, thus effectively depriving later generations of any knowledge of them.
Adrienne Block discussed history's treatment of women composers, in particular the
nineteenth century American, Amy Beach. Beach was esteemed in her lifetime, but her re
reputation has been progressively diminished in histories of American music.
Psychiatrist Anna Burton attributed this tendency to the equation of creativity with
magic and divinity and the desire to make all gods male within patriarchal society.

Both the performance and the panel -on which the composers appeared— contributed
to an important and iconoclastic program.
Elaine Baruch

Associate Professor, York College


EMPLOYMENT

Graduate assistants are needed for a funded research project this summer and
through the academic year to work on developing an instrument controlled for
syntax and concept relations, data collection with fourth graders in schools,
and data analysis. Statistical consultant needed, too. Call Beatrice Kachuck
at Brooklyn College, 780-5943, 780-5892 or 522-2525.

Student interns interested in working in practical politics are needed by the
Missouri ERA Coalition. The Coalition will offer transportation to ahd from
Columbia, Missouri, room, board, local transportation, and help in obtaining
credit from their college or university. The program includes one week of
intensive training, eight weeks of work in the field working on primary
campaigns, and a two-day wrap up after the campaign. For information and an
application, write to Mary Ann Sedey, President, Missouri ERA Coalition, 300 S.
Grand, St. Louis, Missouri, 63139.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

The Alice and Edith Hamilton Competition for the best original scholarly book-
length manuscript on women is now open. Guidelines for the $1,900 competition
are available from Women and Culture Series, The University of Michigan Press,
1058 L.S. & A. Building, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 48109.

Division 35 of Psychology of Women is sponsoring an "Open Symposium of Papers on
the Psychology of Women" on Tuesday, September 2, at the 1980 Annual Convention
of the APA in Montreal, Candada. All those who submit abstracts, regardless of
academic background or professional membership, will be able to present their
scholarship. Send two copies of a 300 word abstract, double-spaced, with complete
summer address, and a self-addressed, stamped postcard, to Susan Riemer Sacks,
Barnard College, New York, New York, 10027. The research may not have been
published or presented anywhere else.

The NEH has awarded a grant to the Women's Studies Program of Hunter College for

the writing of a textbook and instructional manual for the basic course, "Introduction
to Women's Studies". The text will be used experimentally and will be evaluated

by Hunter students and teachers. Other instructors are invited to write to Sarah
Pomeroy, Box 483, Hunter College, CUNY, 695 Park Avenue, New York, New York, 10021.

In addition, the manuscripts will be sent to outside evaluators who will be selected
on the basis of their knowledge and teaching experience {fn the field of Women's.
Studies. Consultants fees will be paid. Application deadline is August 15, 1980

The Women's Center of Brooklyn College provides resources for the following services:
individual therapy, couples, families, crisis intervention and counseling services.
For information on these resources and others, call 780-5777, Monday-Friday, 11-5.

Women's International Democratic Federation and Women for Racial and Economic Equality
are holding a joint Regional Seminar in New York from June 6-8 on "Racial Discrimination
and Its Effects on the Economic Rights of Women". For information, contact WREE, 130
East 16th Street, New York, New York, 10003, (473-6111).

On Thursday, June 12 from 6:30 to 8 pm the Committee to End Violence in the Lives
of Women will hold a vigil in Herald Square (34th and Broadway). For more information
contact the Committee, Box 2216, Brooklyn, New York 11202.