Leading Yale into the 21st Century: Notable Women

As women earned professional, political, and educational equality in the twentieth century, their contributions to Yale increased. Women’s names appeared in the university’s reports and directories in growing numbers; still, inequality persisted. In 1920, for example, thirty-three of the forty librarians in the university directory were women; the seven men were head librarians. Position titles for most of the women working for Yale in the 1920s and 1930s were technician, clinical assistant, assistant resident, private secretary, executive assistant, and a few lecturers. Women’s educational credentials entered in the Yale Historical Register featured degrees from the top women’s colleges and universities, as well as Yale law, medical, and Ph.D. degrees.

In 1952, Yale awarded tenure to a woman for the first time … in the year of her retirement. In 1959 and 1960, two women were awarded tenure in the humanities, and subsequently appointed to full professorships in 1964 and 1965. The admission of women to Yale College in 1969 promoted greater equality in university appointments. The selection of “first women” honored here represents over three centuries of women who have enriched Yale as provisioners, benefactors, students, alumni, educators, staff, and volunteers. Women continue to promote Yale’s mission – “improving the world today and for future generations through outstanding research and scholarship, education, preservation, and practice.”

Florence Bingham Kinne

Florence Bingham Kinne (1863–1929) earned her B.A. in 1886 at the University of Michigan and later attained a master’s degree. In 1905, she was hired as Yale’s first woman instructor, in the pathology department, with a title of laboratory assistant in pathology. Since the Yale School of Medicine did not begin admitting women until 1916, Florence Bingham Kinne would have been the only woman in nearly every space she entered during her time at Yale University.

Martha May Eliot and Ethel Collins Dunham

Martha May Eliot (left) and Ethel Collins Dunham

Martha May Eliot (1891–1978) and Ethel Collins Dunham (1883–1969), life partners, taught at Yale School of Medicine between the world wars. Their groundbreaking research, advocacy, and administrative achievements at Yale and elsewhere greatly improved public health care for children. In 1920 Dunham became the first woman on the medical school faculty, and in 1921 Eliot joined her. They also took on growing responsibilities at the national Children’s Bureau, and in the mid-1930s relinquished their Yale appointments to continue as lecturers. They worked for the World Health Organization from 1949 to 1951, when President Truman named Eliot chief of the Children’s Bureau. In 1956 Eliot became a professor at Harvard. Both were the first women to be awarded the American Pediatric Society’s highest honors.

Bessie Lee Gambrill

Bessie Lee Gambrill (1883–1988) was the first woman to earn tenure in a subject other than nursing at Yale University. She entered Western Maryland College at the age of fifteen, graduated in 1902, and began her career teaching in a one-room schoolhouse. She received a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1921, and her dissertation titled College Achievement and Vocational Efficiency was published in 1922. Gambrill was appointed assistant professor of elementary education at Yale in 1923, associate professor in 1926, and was awarded emeritus status in 1952. When Professor Gambrill died on April 1, 1988, at the age of 105, her obituary in the New York Times noted that “she was known for her work on intelligence tests for children and for promoting mental hygiene programs in schools.”

Mary Clabaugh Wright

Mary Clabaugh Wright (1917–1970) was the first woman to receive tenure in the Yale Faculty of Arts and Sciences. This noted scholar in the field of modern Chinese history held the following appointments at Yale: 1959–1964, associate professor of history; 1961–1970, adviser, Far Eastern literature, University Library; 1964–1970, professor of history.

Elga Wasserman

Elga Wasserman (1924–2014) received a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Harvard in 1949. She served as assistant to the dean of the Yale Graduate School from 1962 to February 1969, when President Kingman Brewster, Jr., appointed her special assistant on the education of women and chair of the Committee on Coeducation. In 1973 Wasserman left administration to attend Yale Law School, from which she received a J.D. in 1976, afterward practicing family law. In 1995 she took another career path, speaking and writing about women in academia.

Joni Barnett

When women were admitted to Yale College in 1969, Joni Barnett (1931–2015) was hired to coach synchronized swimming and was soon appointed director of women’s physical education. In 1973 she became director of physical education for all undergraduates, the first woman to hold that position at any coeducational university in America. By the end of the decade, Yale offered thirteen varsity sports to female athletes. In 1979 Barnett was appointed associate director of athletics for physical education and recreation. In 1983 she was appointed director of Yale’s Office of Community and State Relations, a position she held until her retirement. She served in a leadership role with the Connecticut Special Olympics Summer Games and on the President’s Council on Physical Fitness.

Marian Wright Edelman

Marian Wright Edelman (b. 1939), J.D. 1963, is the founder and president emerita of the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF). She was the first black woman admitted to the Mississippi Bar and the first woman elected by alumni as a member of the Yale Corporation, serving from 1971 to 1977. Under her leadership, the CDF has become the nation’s strongest voice for children and families. She has received over a hundred honorary degrees and many awards including the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Prize, the Heinz Award, and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. In 2000 Edelman received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Robert F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award for her writings.

Hanna Holburn Gray

Gray (right) with Kingman Brewster, Jr. (left) and A. Bartlett Giamatti at Giamatti's inauguration as president of Yale on October 14, 1978.

Hanna Holburn Gray (b. 1930), LL.D. 1978, was associate professor of history at the University of Chicago when she was selected as the first woman successor trustee of the Yale Corporation in 1971. She resigned in 1974 when she was appointed professor of history and the first woman provost at Yale. Upon the resignation of President Kingman Brewster, Jr., in 1977, she was appointed the first woman president (acting) and served until the appointment of A. Bartlett Giamatti in 1978. Gray then accepted the presidency of the University of Chicago, the first woman to serve as the chief executive of a major coeducational university. She retired in 1993 and became professor of history emeritus.

Sylvia Ardyn Boone

Sylvia Ardyn Boone (1942–1993), Ph.D. 1979, was the first woman of color to receive tenure at Yale. Beginning as a visiting lecturer in 1970, she taught a course on The Black Woman, organized the acclaimed Chubb Conference on the Black Woman, and established the annual Black Film Festival. Appointed assistant professor of the history of art in 1979 and associate professor in 1985, Boone received tenure in 1988. Her teaching included a class on female imagery in African art. Her book Radiance from the Waters: Ideals of Feminine Beauty in Mende Art was published by Yale University Press in 1986.

Millicent “Penny” Demmin Abell

Millicent (“Penny”) Demmin Abell (b. 1934) served as Yale university librarian from 1985 to 1994. The first woman to hold the position, she is credited with moving the traditional card catalog system into the computer age, advancing technical services, and cooperatively leading the national effort to preserve over 75 million books printed before 1860.

Judith Rodin

Judith Rodin (b. 1944), Yale professor of psychology and psychiatry, was the first female dean of the Yale Graduate School when appointed in 1991. In 1992 she was appointed provost of Yale University, a role in which she served until 1994, when she was appointed president of the University of Pennsylvania, becoming the first permanent female president of an Ivy League institution.

Linda Koch Lorimer

Lorimer carries the Yale mace during the 2013 Commencement procession.

Linda Koch Lorimer (b. 1952), J.D. 1977, the only woman who has served Yale as an elected trustee (1990–1993) and an officer of the university, retired in 2015 as Yale’s longest-serving officer. Starting in the General Counsel’s Office in 1978, she was appointed an associate provost in 1983. Lorimer also served as acting chief of human resources, developing Yale’s first professional human resources office in 1984. She left Yale in 1986 to serve as president of Randolph-Macon Women’s College, returning in 1993 to serve as vice president and secretary. In 2013 Lorimer was appointed vice president of Global Strategic Initiatives. She is also credited with establishing the Office of New Haven Affairs in 1994, the Office of International Affairs, and the Office of Digital Dissemination.

Maya Lin

Maya Lin (b. 1959), B.A. 1981, M.Arch. 1986, D.F.A. Hon. 1987, best known as the creator of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, served on the Yale Corporation 2002–2008. She designed the Women’s Table sculpture fountain, commissioned in 1989 for the twentieth anniversary of coeducation in Yale College. The sculpture on Rose Walk near the university library lists the number of women students annually up to 1993, when it was dedicated. It is also viewed as a commemoration of the contributions of all of the women who have enriched Yale.