Controversial Group Marks Quarter-Century Of Fighting For NIH Women Scientists' Rights

Amid mixed reputation, the organization, known as SHER, focuses on ending discrimination and providing support. Twenty-five years ago, a group of women at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., began meeting every Wednesday at noon to work together to combat sex discrimination at NIH. Today, a group of women meets every Wednesday at noon to work together to combat sex discrimination at NIH. Little more than the faces have changed, according to members of the organization, known as SHER, or Self Help for Equal Rights, a support group for women-and occasionally men-who feel they have been discriminated against or harassed. EQUALITY FOR ALL: SHER's goal is fairness for all NIH workers, but its focus is on women, says president Billie Mackey. Discrimination against women is still pervasive at NIH, members say, taking the form of anything from subtle chauvinism-such as being expected to make coffee for male colleagues-to pay inequities to outright sexual harassment. SHER has maintained its brown-bag sessions through the terms of six United States presidents and six NIH directors (and several acting directors), meeting in various places on the NIH campus. Despite repeated requests for interviews, no NIH administrator would talk to The Scientist about SHER. Citing a potential conflict of interest, NIH deputy director Ruth Kirschstein declined to be interviewed. Kirschstein was championed by SHER when she was named to head the National Institute of General Medical Sciences in 1974, becoming the first woman institute director at NIH. Even the director of NIH's Office of Equal Opportunity (OEO), Naomi Churchill, would not comment. Through a staff member, Churchill noted that it would be inappropriate, since some members of SHER may be involved in litigation against NIH. Currently, SHER is helping about 25 people with complaints against NIH, only a few of which involve legal action. SHER has several hundred members, including many men, says Billie Mackey, the group's president since 1981 and a technical information specialist at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. While equal treatment of all NIH employees is SHER's goal, the focus remains on women. Many members are retired or work at other agencies. Many want their membership kept confidential, says Mackey, for fear of retaliation by the NIH administration. Attendance at the weekly meetings waxes and wanes: Women come when they experience discrimination firsthand or to hear an update on an important issue, then do not show up for a while. Usually, everyone fits around a conference table, eating lunch or catching up on paperwork. The first half-hour is devoted to giving information and advice to people who need help, Mackey says, and the second half-hour to current projects or news. Anyone can raise a question or ask for advice on how to handle alleged discrimination or how to press a complaint with the OEO. This sharing of experiences and advice on how to handle situations is one of the things that SHER does best, according to Viola Young-Horvath, executive director of the Federation of Organizations for Professional Women, a Washington, D.C.-based consortium of women's groups. "SHER has been there for a long period to help women who have run into difficulties,'' she says. "Women will really get attention and advice from women with considerable experience'' in matters of discrimination. NOWHERE TO TURN: NIMH’s Susan Swedo says women scientists fear pursuing discrimination cases outside of NIH’s system. Nevertheless, SHER remains something of an enigma at NIH. Many women scientists interviewed for this article did not want to be quoted, since their impressions of SHER were secondhand. Its meetings are usually listed in the "Yellow Sheet,'' the NIH calendar of events, but not everyone knows what Self Help for Equal Rights means or is aware of the group's activities. Susan Swedo, a pediatrician and acting scientific director of the National Institute of Mental Health, for example, says that it took a few years before she became aware of SHER. Further, at least some women scientists at NIH feel that SHER is not working primarily in their interests. "They deal with issues not particularly relevant to women scientists,'' says Joan P. Schwartz, chief of the Molecular Genetics Section of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and special assistant to the deputy director for intramural research. However, Mackey notes that Schwartz may not be knowledgeable about all the efforts SHER makes on behalf of women scientists, such as one-on-one counseling or meeting as private citizens with members of Congress who help set NIH policy. Several other women scientists expressed sentiments similar to Schwartz's. These women put their faith instead in a group formed under former NIH director Bernadine Healy called the Women Scientist Advisors, known as WSAs. The advisers are elected from every institute and division and must be tenured or tenure-track scientists. The WSAs come together as a group to discuss issues such as pay equity, mentoring, promotion, and tenure. The perception that some women scientists have of SHER is that it is a group that pushes women to sue. One woman scientist who is sympathetic to SHER but not a member, speaking on condition of anonymity, says that she advises women not to sue when they seek her counsel on a discrimination problem. "You burn your career on these things,'' she comments. This same scientist acknowledges, however, that SHER served an important role: "For women who do want to take legal action, having women who have been through it and can tell you who to talk to and what to expect is important.'' "The big fear among scientists is that if they go outside the system, then they might as well give up being a scientist,'' says Swedo. SHER president Mackey comes across these sentiments frequently and finds some truth to them. "We put pressure on the administration to change what it is doing'' regarding discrimination and harassment of women, she maintains. "A lot of women scientists are fearful because their jobs are on the line.'' Mackey says, however, that SHER "is very careful to try to work with the administration, to try to push them to follow through on laws that are on the books. We are not just trying to make a lot of noise when we see unjust and unethical behavior," such as stealing the ideas of women or minority scientists without credit. "We are pushing to make science more fair.'' SHER began in the early 1970s as an outgrowth of an NIH chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW). Ironically, SHER's founders believed NOW was too militant, says Mackey, and involved in issues-such as abortion-that were not relevant to women on the job at NIH. One of the first things SHER did, and one of its great successes, was to help establish a day-care center on the NIH campus for employees. It was one of the first in the federal sector and a model for others, according to Mackey. One subgroup of SHER worked on the day-care issue. Others concerned themselves with legislative issues or with helping women who felt discriminated against use the Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) system. As SHER's newsletter of January/February 1973 put it, "We found the EEO procedures to be lengthy, ineffective, and often painful. SHER's purpose is to help other victims of discrimination to avoid our mistakes, and to make the EEO system work as it should.'' MAKING HER POINT: SHER cofounder Rosalind Marimont pursued a lengthy discrimination suit after she was denied a promotion recommended by a supervisor. Two of SHER's founders were Fann Harding, a Ph.D. anatomist hired at NIH in 1958 to a non-research job in the office of extramural research, and Rosalind Marimont, an applied mathematician who came to NIH in 1960 after 18 years with the National Bureau of Standards. Both ran into a glass ceiling in their attempts to get promoted. Harding was stuck at the GS-14 level for about 10 years. She filed a sex-discrimination complaint in the early 1970s with the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare when repeated attempts to get a promotion failed. Her EEO case took two years, but in 1974, NIH acknowledged that discrimination played a role in her being denied a promotion. As a result, she won promotion to GS-15 and a title: assistant to the director, division of blood diseases and resources. Marimont's case lasted longer and had greater repercussions for women at NIH. Although she did not have a Ph.D., she was an independent investigator at the GS-13 level, which she had reached at the National Bureau of Standards. In 1964, she was denied a promotion to GS-14 that her supervisor had recommended. Her supervisor suggested she do some work directly relevant to the institute, so she set up an accounting system and used the data for a cost/benefit analysis of the institute's research work. Her boss was pleased, but the scientific directors of NIH again rejected a promotion in 1971, saying that Marimont had simply done what a systems analyst would do. At the time her publications were cited more than any other GS-14 or GS-15 mathematician at NIH, all men, according to the September/October 1977 SHER newsletter. "I hit the roof,'' says Marimont. "It dawned on me that I was not getting the recognition I ought to have because I was a woman. I started comparing notes with others . . . and found disparity of pay between men and women.'' After pursuing a grievance through the EEO system at NIH that "dragged on and on,'' Marimont filed a class-action lawsuit on Nov. 1, 1973, charging NIH with sex discrimination. (She was promoted at about the same time, but maintained her suit, she says, to benefit all women at NIH.) The case languished for almost six years, in part because it was being heard in the U.S. District Court in Washington by Judge John Sirica, whose attention was diverted by Watergate. Ultimately, the class-action status of the suit was denied. In 1979, Judge Harold Greene, who had taken over for Sirica, ruled in favor of Marimont, ordering NIH to pay her retroactive wages and attorney fees. More important, he ordered NIH to develop "fair and definite'' promotion procedures for scientists. VOICE OF EXPERIENCE: Dealing with retaliation after filing a discrimination suit is "isolating," says Margaret Jensvold. In recent years, much of SHER's efforts have been directed at helping two former staff fellows who separately sued NIH for sex discrimination. SHER monitored the court sessions, helped set up hot lines to inform callers of the status of the trials, and provided some financial help to Maureen Polsby, a neurologist, and Margaret Jensvold, a psychiatrist. Both women were working on temporary fellowships during the 1980s when, they claimed, they were ill-treated by male supervisors and colleagues-in Polsby's case allegedly including sexual harassment and theft of research. Although the cases were separate, the judge ruled on them together, dismissing both in March 1996. Mackey calls these cases "typical'' and says that one of the reasons SHER supported Polsby and Jensvold is that they were willing to go public. "Women who bring lawsuits, which are very expensive, are doing it to support all the women at NIH,'' she says. Jensvold says that dealing with discrimination and retaliation is "isolating. As other employees withdraw, the person tries to make things better, but things get worse. The person is targeted as a troublemaker. When I talked with Billie Mackey, she had 15 years of experience. She was able to say there would be retaliation and this is how it would play out.'' SHER helps women "overcome the aloneness,'' says Jensvold. Mackey, who is renowned for coming to meetings with high NIH officials well prepared with statistics, does not believe things have gotten much better for women scientists at NIH. "All the work we've done in the last 25 years doesn't seem to make a difference when you look at women in the sciences at NIH,'' she says. Women with high GS grades "are mostly in administration, not hands-on science.'' She will not be satisfied until all intramural women scientists get the promotions and the pay they deserve. Nevertheless, the constant pressure from SHER and others on the NIH administration appears to be paying off. According to Schwartz, the proportion of women lab chiefs has gone from 4 percent to 10 percent in the last four years, and the proportion of women section chiefs has increased to 18 percent. Billy Goodman, a freelance science writer based in Montclair, N.J., is online at goodmanb@styx.ios.com.

Controversial Group Marks Quarter-Century Of Fighting For NIH Women Scientists' Rights

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