If you are a fan of the real-life stories behind the hit movies ‘Hidden Figures’, and ‘Erin Brokovich, the popular book ‘Radio Girls’ by Sarah-Jane Stratford, and the more recent Apple+ TV series ‘Lessons in Chemistry’ starring Brie Larson, you will definitely want to buy Dr. Helene Z. Hill‘s forthcoming memoir ‘The Crying Window’, which details her experience as a scientist navigating a new world at the dawn of the feminist movement in the United States.
Her name may not be as familiar to you yet, but Dr. Hill’s work has had an indelible impact in the world of science, despite the fact that a number of her male peers throughout her career worked against her being recognized or succeeding in her field. She is 95 years old and was one of the first female scientists who fought against scientific fraud as a whistleblower. Being a woman scientist back then was practically unheard of. Women were looked down on intellectually, expected to raise children and run a home.
But as any trailblazer or pioneer like Dr. Hill will tell you, going against the expected norms and societal pressures is always a huge risk, one which she was willing to take, especially for the many women in STEM fields who would join the arena after her. ‘The Crying Window’ is about Dr. Hill’s experience standing up for underpaid, under-promoted, and generally disrespected women, and also details her experience standing up against corruption.
Helene grew up on the suburban Main Line outside of Philadelphia. Her childhood was interrupted by World War II, during which her father spent two and a half years as a Naval intelligence officer stationed in Karachi, India. She and her mother were constantly at odds and her refuge was in the back hall servants’ quarters, and especially in the loving care of their Irish gardener, Timoney. Many of her childhood experiences were challenging and sad, while others were happy.
From the age of eight, she had wanted to be a doctor, but when she graduated from college, she lost her footing and went to work in New York City. Unhappily married, with two challenging boy children, she found her calling in the next town. She remarried to a doctor, earned a Ph.D. in Biology, and added two daughters to her family. She now faced head-on the challenges for a woman in science at the dawn of the women’s movement. Helene was fired twice as she and her husband moved from job to job across the country, and she faced ridicule for being a woman.
She eventually achieved the rank of Professor at the NJ Medical School in Newark. Her career was mostly smooth sailing until she caught a research fellow cheating, which led all of the forces of the University to line up against her. But she kept on swinging, and this memoir tells her tale.
Today, Helene is Professor Emerita at Rutgers University. She has authored or co-authored more than eighty peer-reviewed publications and two books, and given as many talks on her research. She graduated from Smith College and received a PhD in biology from Brandeis University.
The world certainly needs more stories about women in a “man’s world” standing up for the truth. And Helene’s is starting to get some attention, being featured on Nature.com, The Scientist Magazine and Ralph Nader’s Radio Hour. Below is an exclusive excerpt from the forthcoming memoir ‘The Crying Window’.
Spring 1971, Colorado. The excerpt below focuses on a time when I was an Assistant Professor in the Biophysics and Genetics Department at the University of Colorado Medical School.
Just about that time, the Denver Post featured me in an article as a woman scientist, a rare bird in those days, and the interviewing reporter quizzed me about discrimination. Until then, it had never occurred to me that there was any discrimination against women in science or medicine. I was too busy trying to keep up with my research and coping with problems at home.
But the reporter’s questions struck a chord, and suddenly I woke up. Yes, the men in the department seemed to hold sway and make decisions in the men’s room. Yes, I was the only woman in a department of twelve faculty. Yes, most of the medical students were male. I was subsequently asked to serve on a university-wide committee to look into the status of women faculty at the University of Colorado.
The dean of the medical school, Dr. David Talmage, actually gave me carte blanche to access the faculty personnel files. I enlisted the aid of another junior faculty member, Dr. Jean Priest, an assistant professor in the pathology department. I tabulated our findings and presented them with a memo to the dean and the faculty council, made up of department chairmen, all of whom were men. My memorandum was dated May 10, 1971. In my naïve mind, I thought those men would be shocked at our findings and act immediately to correct the many wrongs. How mistaken I was.
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There were sixteen departments, of which six had no women at all, and three divisions, two of which were all male. Of the ten departments with women, seven had only one woman. My documents for the dean were accompanied by a memorandum spelling out the situation regarding the women faculty in greater detail.
On May 13, I was called into the office of my chairman, Dr. Arthur Robinson. I could tell by the look on his face that there would be trouble. He wasted no time in giving me the ultimatum. He was curt and to the point. I was not going to get tenure. Period. I was stunned. And I finally started to wake up.
I loved Colorado’s outdoor life, beautiful mountains, and comfortable climate. Our children loved it, too. I spent hours trying to get reinstated, to find another department that would have me, but luck was not on my side. I appealed to the dean of the medical school, David W. Talmadge, MD, who was soon superseded by Gordon Meiklejohn, MD. Both listened with artificial sympathy and shrugged their shoulders. I called on Dr. Robert A. Aldrich, MD, Vice President for Health Affairs. He was equally unsympathetic. These three men were all giants in their fields and approaching them was extremely intimidating for me.
Furthermore, I suffered from a problem many women encounter when faced with adversity. I would start to plead my case, could not hold back the tears, and burst out crying. It was all very humiliating. But there was light coming through the darkness. Other women had heard of my stand and rallied behind me. We started meeting together and decided to form a Women’s Organization.
When the men heard about this, they were up in arms, worrying that we would take over the medical school and unseat them from their thrones. We had several meetings, and our organization was under way when I left on December 31, 1972. Most of the six women with tenure wanted nothing to do with our organization and us. Several of them expressed gratitude to their chairmen for promoting and helping their careers, and they tried to persuade us to desist.
After I left, the women continued their efforts for equality, joined by the small but increasing number of female medical students. Several years later, I was informed that they were filing a class action lawsuit charging, among other things, salary discrimination. I was a class member, and when they won, I was adjudged to have been underpaid by twenty thousand dollars, which was a good sum in those days.
Unfortunately, I was also told that I could settle for two thousand dollars by remaining in the class, but if I wanted the whole award, I would have to get my own lawyer and argue for it on my own. I took the two thousand dollars. By this time, I was into other things and did not want to spend the time pursuing the case any further.
Other women did not fare as well as I. One neurologist friend who had been well supplied with research funds from a pharmaceutical company went up for tenure, supported by her colleagues and the dean, but not by her chairman. She failed to get promoted. She tried again the following year, and this time, her chairman and fellow department members supported her but not the dean. That was the kiss of death for her.
She came in one morning and found the contents of her office piled outside the door with a lock that had been changed. She went into private practice after that. My geneticist friend was treated similarly, failed to get tenure, and was locked out of her office with her belongings in the hallway. She is still going strong and has since been recognized as a distinguished scholar and an expert in her field.
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Dr. Hill is a graduate of Smith College and received a PhD in biology from Brandeis University in 1964. She was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard and the University of Colorado Medical Schools and she rose through the ranks from assistant to full professor at the Medical Schools of the University of Colorado; Washington University in St. Louis; Marshall University, Huntington, West Virginia; and the New Jersey Medical School, in Newark, New Jersey. Dr. Hill has co-authored more than eighty scientific publications and was awarded the Smith College Medal in 1997. Dr. Hill retired in December 2016 and is Professor Emerita, at Rutgers-The State University of New Jersey. You can see more of her work, including links to her forthcoming book ‘The Crying Window’, by visiting her website.
