One of the school’s first female faculty members talks about the initially uninviting climate — and how she’s built the field of feminist economics.
When Myra Strober arrived at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1972, she was one of the first two women faculty members hired. “It was 90 men and me,” recalls Strober, now a professor emerita of economics at the school.
Her hiring coincided with President Lyndon Johnson’s executive order requiring government contractors to hire women and minorities. That year, Stanford GSB also brought in its first African-American, Asian-American, and Hispanic professors.
A Tough Start, But a Lasting Impact
Strober’s first few years at Stanford proved challenging. Some colleagues were unhappy that the university had hired women at all, partly because they were used to holding faculty retreats at an all-male institution. But the dean at the time, Arjay Miller, made sure that female faculty were included in the retreats — he even posted a sign that said “Women” on one of the bathrooms.
Despite these initial challenges, Strober persisted, becoming a pioneer in feminist economics. She was the founding director of Stanford’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research, the first chair of the National Council for Research on Women, and the president of the International Association for Feminist Economics.
One of her studies revealed that while men and women started off with similar salaries when they graduated from Stanford GSB, women fell behind within a few years. “At that point, many women had taken time off to have children, and they were penalized extraordinarily for that,” she says.
Shaping the Future
When Strober first arrived at the business school, only five women were enrolled in its classes, so she became active in an effort to recruit more female students.
“As soon as word got out that the GSB was interested in accepting women students, the applications flowed in,” she recalls. “It wasn’t a supply problem. It was institutional discrimination that changed.”
She also taught a course called Women and Work, later changing the name to Work and Family to entice men to sign up. Now, “the percentage of men in the class keeps increasing,” she says. “We’re up to 30% to 35% men in the class.”
Looking Ahead
Strober knows there’s still much work to do to achieve gender equality in business, starting with better family leave policies. She’s encouraged by the growing push for paternity leave, which she says will benefit everyone.
“More men want to take time out to raise their children,” she notes. “Once men are doing this as well as women, I think it will be a much smoother path for everybody.”
Read the full, original story to learn more about Myra Strober’s impact at Stanford GSB.
