How the Pioneering Women of the Class of ’72 Broke Through
“The real impact of having women in the school was not so much a feminizing effect but a humanizing one,” Susan Phillips said. | Courtesy of Susan Phillips, Anne Thornton, and Barbara West, with special thanks to Luther Nussbaum
Enrolling at Stanford GSB at the height of the women’s movement was an inflection point for both the students and the school.
Rising through the ranks of an educational publishing company in the 1960s, Barbara West decided she would prefer to run the business. Maybe, she thought, an MBA would help.
But her first interview with a Stanford GSB admissions dean did not go well. “We might as well save our time,” he told her. “We only admit women who have either a family fortune or business to run, and since you don’t, why, there’s no place for you here.”
That was 1967. Three years later, with the women’s movement cresting, West tried again — and received a completely different reception. Gary Williams, Stanford GSB’s new dean of admissions and financial aid, was open to female, minority, and other nontraditional applicants. “I was focused on admitting the very best people I could — and that was all,” Williams says.
West would become one of five women among 308 students in the Class of 1972. Though tiny, it was one of the largest female cohorts the school had ever welcomed — an inflection point for both the school and the women themselves.
It was the start of a journey that would open doors for other women business students, but not one without obstacles.
“Nice Girls” Mean Business
The summer after their first year at Stanford, West and two of her classmates, Anne Thornton and Susan Phillips, collaborated on a multimedia presentation about their GSB experiences, titled “What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?” The show described their emotional struggles in the face of skepticism from classmates and the faculty (which was all male until 1972). Scored with the era’s music, including the Beatles’ “It’s Getting Better All the Time” and Aretha Franklin’s “Respect,” it also expressed their hope for broader acceptance of women’s changing roles and aspirations.
Toward the end of the presentation, West said, “If another woman were to say, ‘Should I come to business school?’ my answer would be, ‘If that is the area you want to go into, hell yes, it’s well worth it.’”
Blazing Trails for Women MBA Students
Despite encountering resistance on campus, the women pressed on — gaining the skills, knowledge and confidence needed to earn leadership roles in business. They also gained acceptance and even admiration; one male classmate suggested that the presence of women had “not so much a feminizing effect but a humanizing one.”
The five would eventually take the “Nice Girls” presentation on the road to attract female applicants to the GSB. Looking back, Susan Phillips sees Dean Williams as “a hero” for the times, as his forward-thinking attitude changed not only the lives of her and the others in her cohort, but also those of future women MBA students.
After graduation, the five women entered a business world still adjusting to the notion that they could be more than secretaries or stenographers. They built management careers in diverse organizations and industries and mentored others as GSB alumni.
And their legacy lives on. More than 50 years after that pioneering group from 1972, the number of women MBA students at the GSB has grown to nearly half of the class.
Read the full, original story and learn more about the ground-breaking journey of the five women in the Stanford GSB Class of 1972 — and where they are now.
