Abstract
Twenty-two-year-old Emily Taylor sat quietly in a corner of the dean of women’s office suite at Ohio State University (OSU). Unsure about pursuing a career in the field of guidance and counseling, Taylor had asked Associate Dean of Women Grace S. M. Zorbaugh if she could shadow her to learn more about the profession of “deaning.” On that summer day in 1937, she glanced down at a document on the table, hoping the student meeting with Zorbaugh would not notice Taylor’s presence as she listened intently to the conversation on the other side of the room. She typically found the stories she heard interesting. This one, however, disturbed her.
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Notes
Edith Blizzard, “Highlights of the Vocational Information Conferences (VIC) for Women Students,” 1937, in Dean of Women Papers (hereafter RG 9/c-2), Box 20, Folder: Deans of Women—Vocational Information Conferences 1936–1943 Programs, Constitution, Agendas, and all related materials (1), Ohio State University Archives, Columbus, OH (hereafter OSUA); Jana Nidiffer, Pioneering Deans of Women: More Than Wise and Pious Matrons (New York: Teachers College Press, 2000);
Robert Schwartz, “How Deans of Women Became Men,” The Review of Higher Education 20, 4 (Summer 1997): 419–436;
Schwartz, Deans of Men and the Shaping of Modern College Culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010);
Kathryn Nemeth Tuttle, “What Became of the Dean of Women? Changing Roles for Women Administrators in American Higher Education, 1940–1980” (PhD diss., University of Kansas, 1996), 25–27;
Grace S. M. Zorbaugh, “Student Economic Problems and the Counselor—with Special Reference to Women Students,” Yearbook: Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the National Association of Deans of Women 11 (1933): 115–120.
Lulu Haskell Holmes, A History of the Position of Dean of Womenin a Selected Group of Co-Educational Colleges and Universities in the United States (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1939), 15.
For the concept of separate spheres see Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: “Woman’s Sphere” in New England, 1780–1835 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977).
The concept of Republican Motherhood belongs to Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect & Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980).
Edward H. Clarke, Sex in Education: or, a Fair Chance for the Girls (Boston, MA: James R. Osgood and Company, 1873), 19.
Susan Zschoche, “Dr. Clarke Revisited: Science, True Womanhood, and Female Collegiate Education,” History of Education Quarterly 29 4 (1989): 545–569.
The 75 percent figure is drawn from Sharon Hartman Strom, Beyond the Typewriter: Gender, Class and the Origins of Modern American Office Work, 1900–1930 (Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 326.
Barbara Miller Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985), 58–61.
Also see Carol Lasser, Educating Men and Women Together: Coeducation in a Changing World (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press with Oberlin College, 1987).
On University of Chicago’s dean of women see Nidiffer, Pioneering Deans. Also see Carolyn Terry Bashaw, “Stalwart Women”: A Historical Analysis of Deans of Women in the South (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999); and Schwartz, “How Deans of Women Became Men.”
The Association of Collegiate Alumnae (ACA) and the American Association of University Women (AAUW) are referred to as AAUW throughout the book. The ACA merged with the Southern Association of College Women in 1921, becoming the AAUW. See Nidiffer, Pioneering Deans; Schwartz, “How Deans of Women Became Men”; Marion Talbot and Lois Kimball Mathews Rosenberry, The History of the American Association of University Women, 1881–1931 (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1931);
Marion Talbot, More Than Lore: Reminiscences of Marion Talbot, Dean of Women, the University of Chicago, 1892–1925 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1936); and Tuttle, “What Became of the Dean of Women.” The idea of “sanitary science,” developed by Ellen Swallow Richards, began the home economics movement.
Ellen Richards, The Cost of Living: As Modified by Sanitary Science (New York: John Wiley, 1900).
I grouped the meetings influenced by Talbot under the rubric Deans of Women of the Middle West, as does the Bowling Green State University Center for Archival Collections, Bowling Green, OH (hereafter BGSUCAC) which houses the National Association of Deans of Women (NADW) records. See also Janice J. Gerda, “Gathering Together: A View of the Earliest Student Affairs Professional Organizations,” NASPA Journal 43, 4 (2006): 147–163; Nidiffer, Pioneering Deans;
Kathryn Sisson Phillips, “Beginnings,” Journal of NADW 16 (1953): 143–145;
Gerda, “A History of the Conferences of Deans of Women, 1903–1922” (PhD diss., Bowling Green State University, 2004); Holmes, History of the Position; Mary Ross Potter, Kathryn Philips, Mina Kerr, and Agnes Wells, “Report of Committee on History of the NADW,” 1926, in National Association for Women in Education Records (hereafter MS-218), Box 8, Folder: History Committee, BGSUCAC; Schwartz, Deans of Men; Schwartz, “How Deans of Women Became Men.”
As quoted in Joyce Antler, Lucy Sprague Mitchell: The Making of a Modern Woman (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), 130. Alice Freeman Palmer was instrumental in Sprague’s appointment as dean of women at the University of California.
Nidiffer, Pioneering Deans; Association of Collegiate Alumnae (ACA), Publications of the ACA Magazine Series III, No. 18 (December 1908);
ACA, Publications of the ACA Register Supplement Series III (December 1908);
ACA, Publications of the ACA Magazine Series III, No. 10 (January 1905), 73;
ACA, Publications of the ACA Series III, No. 13 (February 1906), 72. For the dangers of vocation, see Antler, Lucy Sprague Mitchell, 130; and the ACA proceedings of the 1908 conference.
ACA, Contributions towards a Bibliography of the Higher Education of Women (Boston, MA: Trustees of the Public Library, 1897);
ACA, Publications of the Magazine (January 1905), 104; Talbot, “Public and Social Service as Vocations for College Women: Together with a Statement of Preparatory Professional Courses Offered by the Colleges Belonging to the Association of Collegiate Alumnae” in History of the Chicago Association of Collegiate Alumnae, 1888–1917 (Reprint in public domain: Nabu Press, no date);
Margaret C. Dollar, “The Beginnings of Vocational Guidance for College Women: The Women’s Educational and Industrial Union, the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, and Women’s Colleges” (EdD diss., Harvard University, 1992);
ACA, Contributions Towards a Bibliography of the Higher Education of Women (Boston, MA: Trustees of the Public Library, 1905), 1547; Kate Holladay Claghorn, “Occupation for the College Graduate,” Publications of the ACA Magazine Series III, No. 3 (February 1900). Also note that Breckinridge lived at Hull House during summers for over ten years beginning in 1907.
See Virginia Kemp Fish, “The Hull House Circle: Women’s Friendships and Achievements,” in Gender, Ideology, and Action: Historical Perspectives on Womens Public Lives, ed. Janet Sharistanian (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986).
Talbot and Breckinridge used the casework methodology of social work, employing individual interviews as the basis for student counseling. See Tuttle, “What Became of the Dean of Women,” 36–40; Holmes, History of the Position, 98–106; Nidiffer, Pioneering Deans, 102, 120; Jana Nidiffer and Carolyn Terry Bashaw, Women Administrators in Higher Education: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), 155.
Susan Kingsbury’s work has been called the formal start for the growing interest surrounding women’s employment by Dollar, though clearly AAUW and deans considered the topic a decade before 1908. Dollar, “Beginnings of Vocational Guidance”; Susan Kingsbury, “Efficiency and Wage of Women in Gainful Occupations,” The Publications of the ACA Magazine Series III, No. 18 (December 1908); Frederik M. Ohles, Shirley M Ohles, and John G. Ramsay, Biographical Dictionary of Modern American Educators (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1997), 191. Also see Talbot and Rosenberry, The History of the AAUW, 229–230; Nidiffer, Pioneering Deans; William A. Bryan, “May L. Cheney, First President, 1924–1925,” ACPA Presidential Profiles, BGSUCAC, http://www2.bgsu.edu/colleges/library/cac/sahp/pdfs/May%20L.%20Cheney_new.pdf.
Holmes, History of the Position, 98–100; Lois Kimball Mathews, The Dean of Women (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1915), 105–106, 108–126; Nidiffer, Pioneering Deans.
For an in-depth treatment of the emergence of professional associations, see Hugh Hawkins, Banding Together: The Rise of National Associations in American Higher Education, 1887–1950 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992).
John M. Brewer, History of Vocational Guidance: Origins and Early Development (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1942), 59, 148–149; Bryan, “May L. Cheney, First President, 1924–1925”; Dollar, “Beginnings of Vocational Guidance,” 98–99; Holmes, History of the Position, 100; Nidiffer, Pioneering Deans, 120; Phillips, “Beginnings” (1953). Janice Gerda in “A History of the Conferences of Deans of Women” asserts that NADW expanded to involve outside experts who never met with the deans of women in their Middle Western Deans of Women meetings. This assertion overlooks the fact that the deans worked with these same outside experts in AAUW meetings where they caucused regularly, and that some deans of women involved these outside experts in campus vocational conferences. For instance, the WEIU, Russell Sage Foundation, University Settlement of Chicago, Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), and the American Council on Education (ACE) were well engaged in the network before 1916 when the NADW was founded. To review the NADW program speakers that Gerda considers to be new additions to NADW’s repertoire, see “Second National Convention of Deans of Women,” February 26–28, 1917, in MS-218, Box 9, Folder: National Association of Women Deans, Administrators and Counselors (NAWDAC) Convention Programs 1909– 1911, 1913, 1914, 1917–1919; NADW, “Fifth National Conference of Deans of Women,” 1919, in MS-218, Box 9, Folder: NAWDAC, Convention Programs 1909–1911, 1913, 1914, 1917–1919; “Third National Conference of Deans of Women,” February 25–28, 1918, in MS-218, Box 9; NADW, “Eighth Annual Meeting NADW,” February 25–26, 1921, in RG 218, Box 9, all from BGSUCAC. The NADW and the Deans of Women of the Middle West, both met between 1917 and 1921 until the two merged. See Nidiffer, Pioneering Deans, 129. The NADW made career education a top priority, calling on the eastern schools to adopt the midwestern practice of providing vocational courses for credit.
Kathryn Sisson Phillips, My Room in the World: A Memoir (New York: Abingdon Press, 1964), 95–98. For an example of the continued networking bet ween the various associations—the NADW, the National Association of Appointment Secretaries (NAAS), the National Vocational Guidance Association (NVGA) and the AAUW—see conference participants in NADW, Yearbook: Proceedings of the Eighteenth Annual Meeting of the NADW (Washington, DC: NADW, 1934), 41–43.
Alice Kessler-Harris, In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men and Quest for Economic Citizenship in the 20th-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 78–79, 207;
Patrick Selmi and Richard Hunter, “Beyond the Rank and File Movement: Mary van Kleeck and Social Work Radicalism in the Great Depression, 1931–1942,” Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare 28, 2 (2001), 75–100. The Chicago branch of the National Women’s Trade Union League of America, once headquartered at the Hull House, became the nexus for Anderson to connect with Breckinridge. One of many books to consider Anderson’s link with the Hull House is Dorothy Sue Cobble, The Other Women’s Movement, 26–27. For other information on the Women’s Bureau and deans of women connections, see Women’s Bureau, “The Following Are Some of the Most Important Organizaitons with Which Miss Anderson Has Cooperated …” Unknown date, in RG 86, Office Files of the Director, 1918–1948, Box 1, Folder: Anderson, Mary (Director, 1918—June 30, 1944), NACP; Mary Anderson, “341—Speeches: Paper Written by Mary Anderson and Read by Mrs. Field at the Annual Meeting of the Association of Deans of Women, Chicago, Blackstone Hotel, Feb. 23,” in RG 86, Public Information Service, Speeches, 1918–1960, Box 2, Folder: #10 (2–23–1922) Anderson, NACP.
Mary Anderson, “341—Speeches: Paper Written by Mary Anderson and Read by Mrs. Field at the Annual Meeting of the Association of Deans of Women, Chicago, Blackstone Hotel, Feb. 23.” Phillips, My Room in the World, 95–98. The body of work critiquing the women’s movement for racism and classism is significant. For a sample of the early critiques by women of color see Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (Watertown, MA: Persephone Press Watertown, 1981);
Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde (Freedom, CA: Crossing: Crossing, 1984);
and bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1981).
With the exception of Helen Bennett, the women from this group of AAUW and Institute of Women’s Professional Relations (IWPR) participants were also members of the NADW. See NADW, Yearbook: Proceedings of the Fifteenth Regular Meeting (Twelfth Annual Meeting) of the NADW (Washington, DC: NADW, 1928), 249–250. Chase Going Woodhouse served as director of personnel, Woman’s College, at the University of North Carolina and was elected in 1944 to the US House of Representatives. Catherine Filene Shouse was the daughter of A. Lincoln and Therese Filene, and granddaughter of William Filene, who founded Filene’s Specialty Store. IWPR published reports on occupational avenues for women. See the papers of Catherine Filene Shouse and the IWPR at SL. In addition, for the involvement of the Filenes in vocational guidance and the NVGA see Brewer, History of Vocational Guidance, Chapters 5, 6, and 7 and pages 7, 100, 143, 157–158, 167, 246. The role of AAUW in the IWPR may be found in Talbot and Rosenberry, The History of the AAUW, 239–241.
For Laura Drake Gill on life phases of women, see: ACA, Publications of the ACA (December 1908), 5–6.
Ohio State University, University of Wisconsin, New Jersey College for Women and Bethany College in West Virginia were cited as offering well established vocational conferences. Frieda S. Miller, Letter to M. Y. Greene, June 13, 1949, in RG 86, Office of the Director General Correspondence of the Women’s Bureau, 1948–1963, Box 30, Folder: 3–4–2–1 Universities & Colleges, NACP. In this letter, Miller also cited Zorbaugh, “VICs at Ohio State University,” Occupations, The Vocational Guidance Magazine 17 (February 1939): 413–417;
Zorbaugh, “VICs at Ohio State University,” Occupations: The Vocational Guidance Journal 21, 5 (January 1943): 376–380. See also Louise Stitt, Division of Minimum Wage, Letter to Zorbaugh, September 17, 1942, in RG 86, Box 87, Office of the Director, General Correspondence of the Women’s Bureau, 1919–1948, WO–Z, Folder: Z, NACP.
Of those who met with their dean of women, only 13 percent said the dean had extensive knowledge of vocational guidance—though 25 percent felt they received good advice. Eunice Mae Acheson, The Effective Dean of Women: A Study of the Personal and Profesional Characteristics of a Selected Group of Deans of Women (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1932), 39, 46;
Zorbaugh, “VICs at Ohio State University” (February 1939).
Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988), 49.
Bibliographies are found in VIC, “Vocations and Leisure Time Activities: A List of Books, Pamphlets and Periodical Articles,” November 16–19, 1937, in RG 9/c-2, Box 20, Folder: Dean of Women—VIC History 1930s–1940s; and VIC for Women Students, “Prepare for What?: A Selected List of Recent Books, Pamphlets and Periodical Articles on Women in Vocations,” 1941, in RG 9/c-2, Box 20, Folder: Dean of Women’s Office—VIC Historical File 1938–1942, both in OSUA. Zorbaugh included citations such as: Joan Beauchamp, Women Who Work (New York: International Publishers, 1937);
National Industrial Conference Board, Women Workers and Labor Supply (New York: National Industrial Conference Board, 1936);
Sophonisba Breckinridge, Women in the Twentieth Century: A Study of Their Political, Social and Economic Activities (London: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1933);
Women’s Bureau and Mary Veronica Dempsey, The Occupational Progress of Women, 1910 to 1930 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1933);
Edith Valet Cook, The Married Woman and Her Job (National League of Women Voters, 1936);
Charles L. Cooper, “Major Factors Involved in the Vocational Choices of Negro College Students” (PhD diss., Cornell University, 1935);
Faye Philip Everett, The Colored Situation: A Book of Vocational and Civic Guidance for the Negro Youth (Boston: Meador Publishing Co., 1936);
Catherine Filene, Careers for Women (Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1920);
Doris Elsa Fleischman Bernays, An Outline of Careers for Women: A Practical Guide to Achievement (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1931);
Helen Christene Hoerle and Eleanor Roosevelt, The Girl and Her Future (New York: H. Smith and R. Haas, 1932);
IWPR, Directory of Colleges, Universities and Professional Schools Offering Training in Occupations Concerned with Business and Industry (New London, CT: IWPR, 1937);
Susan Kingsbury, Economic Status of University Women in the U.S.A.: Report of the Committee on Economic and Legal Status of Women, American Association of University Women in Cooperation with the Women’s Bureau, United States Department of Labor (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1939);
Human Engineering Laboratory, Characteristics Common to Professional Women in Law and Other Non-Structural Fields (Hoboken, NJ: Human Engineering Laboratory, 1938);
Catharine Oglesby, Business Opportunities for Women (New York, London: Harper, 1932);
Adah Peirce, Vocations for Women (New York: Macmillan Company, 1933);
IWPR, Proceedings of the Conference on Women’s Work and Their Stake in Public Affairs, Mar. 28–29–30, 1935, the Hotel Astor, New York City (New London, CT: IWPR, 1935);
Louis H. Sobel and Joseph Samler, Group Methods in Vocational Guidance, with Specific Reference to the Economic Adjustment Problems of Jewish Youth (New York: Furrow Press, 1938);
Thomas Wilson Steen, The Vocational Choices of Students Whose Religious Beliefs Limit Their Occupational Opportunities (Chicago: University of Chicago Libraries, 1939);
Hilda Threlkeld, “The Educational and Vocational Plans of College Seniors: In Relation to the Curricula and the Guidance Programs in Forty-Five Pennsylvania Colleges” (New York: AMS Press, 1935). Other vocational information may be found in Zorbaugh, “Report of the Annual VIC for Women Students of Ohio State University under the Auspices of the Dean of Women’s Office,” in RG 9/c-2, Box 19, Folder: VIC Historical File OSU 1932–1938; and Zorbaugh, “The Ohio State University VICs for Women Students: A Five-Year Survey 1936–1941,” in RG 9/c-2, Box 19, Folder: VIC—Account of VIC 1920–1940, both in OSUA.
Esther Allen Gaw, “We the Deans,” The Journal of Higher Education XI, No. 5 (May 1940): 262–268; Office of the Dean of Women, “VICs for Women Students,” 1937, in 9/c-2, Box 19, Folder: VIC Historical File OSU 1932–1938, OSUA; Ohio Association of Deans of Women (OADW), “Speakers Bureau,” 1939, in 9/c-2, Box 9, Folder: Dean of Women: Ohio Association of Women Deans, Administrators, and Counselors—Meeting Programs, 1968–1969, OSUA; Zorbaugh, “VICs at Ohio State University” (February 1939), 6–7; Zorbaugh, “The Ohio State University VICs for Women Students: A Five-Year Survey 1936–1941,” in RG 9/c-2, Box 19, Folder: VIC—Account of VIC 1920–1940, OSUA; Zorbaugh, “VICs at Ohio State University” (January 1943). Zorbaugh also produced a bibliography in her role as NADW research committee chair: Zorbaugh, “Report of the Committee on Research,” Proceedings of the Twenty-First Annual Meeting of the NADW 15 (June 1937): 61–77.
Zorbaugh, “VICs at Ohio State University” (January 1943). Stitt, who spoke at OSU’s vocational conferences, was Ohio’s Director of Minimum Wage, and active in the Ohio Consumers’ League before taking a job as an industrial economist with the Women’s Bureau. See Landon R. Y. Storrs, Civilizing Capitalism: The National Consumers’ League, Women’s Activism, and Labor Standards in the New Deal Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 221. Marguerite W. Zapoleon, also from Ohio, attended NADW, CGPA and NVGA meetings regularly, first as an employee of the US Department of Education and later as the Women’s Bureau’s chief of employment opportunities. Zapoleon would author the 1940s bureau bulletins on employment outlooks for women in various fields of work, and serve on the NVGA executive committee. Though she declined the opportunity, the NVGA invited her to be president in 1948, and she edited the NVGA’s journal, then known as The Vocational Guidance Quarterly, in 1953 and 1954. Zapoleon graduated from the University of Cincinnati and took summer courses in vocational guidance at Columbia University’s Teachers College. See CGPA, “Preliminary Announcement Convention Program CGPA,” 1947, in RG 9/c-2, Box 7, Folder: National Association of Deans of Women (NADW) Convention 1947, OSUA; National Career Development Association, “Reclaiming Our History: The NCDA Journal Editors (1911–2011),” The Career Development Quarterly, www.ncda.org/aws/NCDA/pt/sp/cd quarterly_history; Brewer, History of Vocational Guidance, 117; Zapoleon, Letter to John L. Bergstresser, January 30, 1948, in RG 86, Office of the Director General Correspondence of the Women’s Bureau, 1919–1948 Cha–Chau, Box 10, Folder: University of Chicago, NACP; Zapoleon, Letter to Raymond Hatch, June 1, 1949, in RG 86, Office of the Director General Correspondence of the Women’s Bureau, 1948–1963 Correspondence File, 1948–1953, Box 30, Folder: 3–4–1–2 Counselors, Guidance, Placement Officers, NACP.
Zapoleon, Letter to Gwendolyn S. Crawford, May 19, 1947, in RG 86, Box 1, Division of Research Leaflets, 1938–1948, Folder: Vocational Leaflet, 1947—“Your Job Future after College,” NACP. See same box and file for further information on the effort. For the leaflet see Women’s Bureau, Your Job Future after College (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1947).
Frances A. Amburser, Letter to Alice K. Leopold, September 26, 1958, in RG 86, Office of the Director General Correspondence of the Women’s Bureau, 1948–1963 1958 Publications 4–1 to 4–2, Box 87, Folder: Publications 4–2 Special Distribution—NVGA, NACP; Leopold, Letter to College Deans of Women, June 1958, in RG 86, Office of the Director General Correspondence of the Women’s Bureau, 1948–1963, 1958 Publications 4–2 to 5, Box 88, Folder: Publications 5 Projects—NVGA, NACP; Leopold, “Today’s Women College Graduates,” The Personnel and Guidance Journal 38, 4 (1959), 280;
Jean Alice Wells, First Jobs of College Women: Report on Women Graduates, Class of 1957, in Cooperation with NVGA, Women’s Section (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1959).
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Sartorius, K.C. (2014). Visions of Economic Citizenship. In: Deans of Women and the Feminist Movement. Historical Studies in Education. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137481344_2
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