Life/Work - Issue 35

For Nancy Hopkins, the defining event occurred in 1994, when she was teaching a biology course that she had developed and then taught with a male colleague at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At one point, her colleague told her that he was going to write a textbook based on the course material -- with another male colleague. "Suddenly, I was out, and he was in," Hopkins, now 57, explains. The following Saturday morning, while she was sitting in front of her computer, a feeling of utter despair suddenly crystallized into a sense of determined resolve. "I can't do this anymore," she said to herself. "I can't make up for what has been taken from me just by working harder."

Hopkins's epiphany was a long time coming. At a time when few women were entering science, she earned her PhD in biology from Harvard University in 1971, joined the faculty at MIT in 1973, and won tenure there at the age of 35 in 1979. By any standard, she was a rising star. But as sharp as her trajectory seemed, the trip to the top was not a happy one. "My life at MIT was difficult from the time I arrived," she says. "I loved science, but it always seemed as if I was battling or as if I was trying to fix something. Women weren't brought up to be as competitive as men, and if I had a problem, I thought it was that I wasn't competitive enough. I couldn't believe that I was being discriminated against."

Over the years, things got worse. At one point, Hopkins tried to add personnel to her research group, but she was told that a lab of more than 20 people was "highly unusual." Later, she discovered that an average staff size in the labs of tenured male professors was 23 people. Another time, Hopkins spent an exhausting year pleading with her superiors for an additional 200 square feet of lab space and then discovered that even junior colleagues, many of them men, already had more space than she had. One day, a woman who washed glassware in Hopkins's laboratory turned to Hopkins and said, "How come these men have so much, and you have so little?" Hopkins was mortified. "All I could think to myself was 'Good grief, this woman isn't a scientist, and she can see what's happening,' " Hopkins said.

In June 1994, Hopkins wrote a letter to Charles Vest, the president of MIT, detailing what she felt was a pattern of discrimination. Concerned about whether the letter went overboard, she showed it to her most esteemed female colleague. "I expected her to think badly of me," Hopkins explains. "Instead, when she got to the bottom of the letter, she said, 'I'd like to sign this and go with you to see the president.' I was blown away. From that moment, my life changed."

Hopkins couldn't have imagined how many other lives her letter would eventually change. The letter (and MIT's response to it) has helped spark a nationwide movement. During the past year, a new wave of feminist demands for equality has been sweeping through American universities -- in science and in medicine particularly, but also in other fields. At Stanford University last year, dozens of female professors filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor alleging a pattern of discrimination. In April 1999, at the University of Washington, five female professors filed a class-action lawsuit alleging pay disparities between men and women. And in May 1999, at the Florida State University College of Law, five female professors resigned en masse, citing gender and racial bias.

This movement is unique because it is being spearheaded not by women who are clamoring for admission to the highest reaches of academia but by women who are already there. Like Hopkins, many women discover at midlife that, despite all of their hard work and visible accomplishments, they still feel marginalized and treated unequally. Additionally, as they look around, they realize that their ranks haven't increased over the years. Critics, including many men who are in positions of power at universities, argue that there aren't enough qualified female candidates to fill the top jobs. But is it reasonable to suggest that, while women are strong enough to fill nearly half of all open positions at medical schools and graduate schools, they somehow lose their skills over time? Isn't it more likely that, as with Hopkins, the opportunities that women are given as they climb up the ladder are simply not equal to those that men are given?

A confluence of two events at MIT prompted action and drew national attention. First, 16 of the university's 17 tenured women in the sciences signed Hopkins's complaint -- an extraordinary act of solidarity. "I realized then that I was part of a pattern," says Hopkins. "Until that point, I had thought that my situation was unique." Second, the administration listened. Ordinarily, powerful people within institutions who are confronted with their shortcomings deny, obfuscate, rationalize, and deceive. By contrast, the powers that be at MIT simply owned up to their faults.