AnneM wrote:
>
> Dear Edequity Colleagues,
> Forwarded from WISENET. I'm sure some of you can help here. Where there is
no
> e-mail address for the autbor of this posting, you can either respond to
> Edequity and I'll forward to WISENET or you can respond directly to the
WISENET
> address shown at the beginning of the posting. WISENET is an unmoderated
list,
> so you should be able to post direct.
> Regards,
> Anne
> <AnneM@edc.org>
> ______________________________________________________________________________
_
> Subject: A variation on the glass ceiling
> From: Women In Science and Engineering NETwork <WISENET@listserv.uic.edu>
> at Internet
> Date: 3/13/98 8:45
>
> Dear Wisenetters:
> I am one of those kinds of women who tend to not notice irrational
> attitudes that people have towards women, and just sail on with what I
> want to do oblivious of the fact that some people are sending me signals
> that nice girls don't do that sort of thing. But recently, a cluster of
> events has caused me to sit up and take notice.
> I came to my first permanent appointment at a time when women were still
> rare in science, although no longer unprecedented (early '80s). Some of
> the older men in the department didn't seem to know how to respond to me,
> but many were supportive and helpful. However, as I progressed through
> the ranks and became more powerful, one who had been especially helpful
> and friendly when I was an assistant professor became more withdrawn and
> even hostile. Finally, things exploded when my name was put up for chair
> of the department, and I actually withdrew my name in part to avoid nasty
> confrontations with him and his attempts to polarize the department over
> my candidacy. (Although, I promise you, I will not let that happen
> again.)
> Then I learned that two other women I know who had entered academia at
> about the same time, and who were now advancing to positions of power,
> experienced exactly the same thing, that men who had been very supportive
> of them when they first entered became hostile and irrational as the women
> advanced to positions of power within the department. In one case, the
> woman already had an associate chair position and retained it despite the
> antagonism. In the other, the woman also withdrew her name from chair
> candidacy. So I wonder if other people have noticed this, that some men
> are happy to support a woman when she is in a junior position (and they
> can be a mentor to her), but become hostile as the woman gains power,
> perhaps because they feel threatened by powerful women. I've never read
> about this in any of the literature about women's issues. This could be
> one contributor to the glass ceiling, that women avoid the overt hostility
> that arises when they begin to rise to powerful positions. I'd appreciate
> any other personal stories, or pointers to discussions in the literature.
>
> ...Mary (a different Mary, who has not participated in but enjoyed the
> asteroid discussions)