Chapter 2: Choosing Opportunities to Develop a Research Career: A Growing Awareness of Gender Issues
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In this Chapter, Dr. Travis explains that she was working as a Research Associate in the Department of Radiation Health, (1965−1967) Radiobiology Laboratories, Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA) when she realized that she missed the laboratory. She accepted a position that involved teaching and starting up a laboratory at the Department of Radiology at the Medical University of South Carolina (Charleston, SC, 1968−1971). >P>Dr. Travis recounts a story that she often tells women to demonstrate how women professionals often don’t believe in themselves. She explains that she was offered a position teaching and starting up a laboratory for the Department of Radiology at the Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, (1968−1971). She first turned the job down. “I had PhDs telling me I could do the job, but I didn’t believe it.” She immediately regretted the decision and called back the next day, taking on that challenge as well as the opportunity to work for her Ph.D. at the Medical University of South Carolina.
Next Dr. Travis talks about her evolving awareness of gender issues. She explains that she had always been aware of gender. She notes that she attended a very good high school (Westinghouse Memorial High School) where she felt that boys and girls were treated equally. She also notes family influences on her sense of equality. Dr. Travis then talks about how the sixties and limitations on women that are unimaginable now.
Dr. Travis also recounts an experience of sexism she had in the Department of Radiation Therapy at the Medical College of South Carolina. She had been hired to set up a laboratory, however when the head of the department hired a man to assist her, he offered this inexperienced new hire $4000.00 more in salary than Dr. Travis was paid “because he had a family and children.” Her salary was increased by $4000 (but no more). “We think it’s a meritocracy,” Dr. Travis says. “But it’s not true. You have to know how to promote yourself.”
Dr. Travis next tells about her decision to go overseas after completing her PhD. The University of South Carolina wanted her to stay, but she wanted to develop her research career and applied for post-doctoral programs, taking a position in London as a Research Scientist (lecturer) in the Department of Radiation Biology at the Mount Vernon Hospital Gray Laboratory (Northwood, Middlesex, United Kingdom, 1976−1979). Dr. Travis explains that the Gray Laboratory was a “Mecca” of radiation therapy and she was selected for their postdoctoral program because of her work on radiation and normal tissue.
Identifier
TravisEL_01_20140324_C02
Publication Date
3-24-2014
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Elizabeth Travis, PhD, Oral History Interview, March 24, 2014
Topics Covered
The Interview Subject's Story - Professional PathPersonal Background Personal Background Experiences re: Gender, Race, Ethnicity Obstacles, Challenges Evolution of Career Women and Minorities at Work Women and Diverse Populations
Transcript
Radiation Therapy, okay.
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
It might have been—no, it was Radiology, that’s right. That’s before radiation—because it’s ancient history here, before radiation therapy or radiation oncology, as it’s known now, were separate.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
So there was a name change?
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
There was a name change after that, so yes. And they said, “Oh, lovely. You can start a lab. We need somebody to do this. We want you to teach the residents,” etc., etc.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Oh, wow.
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
So I took it on for the summer, and the story is, halfway through, they offered me the job permanently. And I didn’t think I could do the job. I tell this story all the time when I’m talking to women, because women undervalue their accomplishments. I mean, here were these people who had PhDs and MDs, telling me I could do the job, yet I didn’t think I could do the job. And women still suffer from this. We call it the Imposter Syndrome. “Maybe they’re going to find me out, I really don’t know what I’m doing here.” And I actually turned the job down and went home and instantly knew I’d made a big mistake. I went back the next day and said, “Can I please have the job if you haven’t given it to the next person yet?” They said yes, and one of the things they had said, “You know, if you do this, you can go to graduate school,” etc. So I did that, I went to graduate school, and so that was—again, people who believed in me, who also mentored me, who encouraged me. And that’s what a mentor is. A mentor is many things. But they introduced me to the field of radiation therapy then at the time, went to meetings, and decided that’s really what I wanted to do, finally. There was a terrific pulmonary physician there; Rusty Harley [phonetic] is his name. Rusty is still alive. And he said, “If you teach me about radiation, I’ll teach you pathology.” And I said, “Okay, it’s a deal.” So I got my PhD there.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
That’s great. Wow. So just for the record, this was the Medical University of South Carolina.
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
Yes. I got my degree in 1976, so I had [inaudible].
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
I got my degree at the Medical University of South Carolina. So the story was I taught school for a year, and I missed the lab, and I went to look for a job just for the summer, just to work in a lab. I just wanted to be back in the lab doing research. And I went to the Medical University of South Carolina, and they were looking for somebody in what was then their radiation therapy department. I walked into the Research Office and she said, “Oh, they’re looking for somebody just like you. Go over there and go talk to them,” and so I did. It was Keene Wallace and Jimmy Fenn. Keene was the radiation oncologist, and Jimmy was the physicist there.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Just so I’m getting this right, we’re talking now about the College of Medicine?
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
Yes. [
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Okay. So this was Department of Radiology, College of Medicine in the Medical University of South Carolina.
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
It was the Department of Radiation Therapy.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Experimental pathology and radiation biology?
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
Yes, experimental pathology, radiation biology, yes. So it was a long time between, because I got married and got divorced and, you know, by this time I had been single since 1970 or 1971, probably even earlier. My marriage did not last very long. Again, it was an issue of, you know, even then, it was not a time when women still weren’t necessarily having their own careers separate from their husband. It was always a secondary. And for us that was a real issue, and I knew that. I finally knew what I wanted to do, and I was not going to give it up.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Since the issue’s come up, what I did want to ask you is kind of how did your awareness of gender issues, women-in-the-workplace issues, how did that evolve? I mean, how early were you aware of this as an issue, and what were kind of the key turning points?
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
Yes, I think about that a lot because I think it’s been a part of me for a very long time. And I think in high school I didn’t much recognize it because Mr. Smith, he didn’t care if you were—we had equal number of men—this was sophomore year in high school—of boys and girls in that class, and he treated us all the same. And that was true in physics and that was true in chemistry, etc. I went to a very good high school in the small town of ours, really well known throughout the district as really being good on the academics.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
What’s the name of the high school?
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
It was Westinghouse Memorial High School. So I guess I became more aware of it. I know my father was very keen on my going to college, but a lot of people told him things like, “Oh, she’ll only get married and have kids. Why are you sending her to college?” And it would really upset him that people said that, because he felt it was really important. So I guessed I picked up a little bit from him early on that there was this—and also my uncle wouldn’t send my cousin, you know. So I think it was there pretty early on in my psyche. So there’s this one incident. I remember I was in junior high school, and I remember telling my mother that I always wanted to have my own money because I never wanted to ask a man for money to buy my underwear. (laughs) So somehow this was—and it wasn’t that my dad was overbearing. My mother was working, like I said, in the house. So I don’t know where that came from. Maybe it was from her. My mother was a pretty independent spirit.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Yes, and it’s funny how you have those moments when you realize that you want to be independent. I mean, I remember a terrible incident when I was in high school, when my mother had gone down to the library to apply for a library card, and she couldn’t get one without my dad co-signing, because she had no job.
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
Yes, right.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
And she was just—the anger and humiliation when she came home, and I thought, “Wow. I’m never going through that.” (laughs)
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
Yes. I don’t know if you’ve read the book, Gail Collins’ book, When Everything Changed. I mean, she talks about even things I didn’t realize. In the sixties, women couldn’t—you couldn’t own property, you couldn’t have your own checking account, you couldn’t have credit cards. You couldn’t. I mean, to me, that’s like [ ] in my lifetime, and unbelievable.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
It is, and I think, you know, young women today, they would be thinking, well, that’s like the Middle Ages. They would have no idea that it’s really within fairly recent history that those things were true.
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
Yes, it is, and I guess I didn’t realize it at the time and certainly had really thought it had been much earlier than that. So then also a professor, a chemistry professor in graduate school, my master’s degree, there were two women in the class, and he said, “Well, I don’t know why you girls are here. You’re only going to get married.” That infuriated Judy, was her name, and I both because we loved what we were doing. So it was always kind of working out there. An incident happened when I was working in radiation therapy department, that I’d been there a year, started the program, was teaching the residents and designed a course and everything for the residents, and then it was I taught the diagnostic residents as well as the radiation therapy residents. We decided that—the head of the department, Keene Wallace, decided that we needed somebody else in the lab, I needed help in the lab. He wanted to hire another person, and he hired a man, and he was going to pay him $4,000 more than he was paying me. So I went to the physicist who was my direct supervisor to me, and I said, “Why are we doing this?” And he said, “I don’t know.” He said, “I’m not in favor, but you have to talk to Keene.” So I went in and asked Keene, I said, “Keene.” I remember this conversation. I said, “If I’m not doing a good job, please tell me.” He said, “Oh, you do a wonderful job.” And I said, “Well, then why are you going to pay somebody who’s new, has the same experience as me, but hasn’t been in this department, has not started anything, why are you paying him 4,000 more?” He said, “Because he’s married and has a family.” And I said, “But that’s not a good enough reason.” And he gave me the 4,000. He didn’t give me a higher salary, but he at least—but, you know, that was like—this was 1976. This wasn’t that long ago. Or early seventies. It was not that long ago.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
That always felt so ironic to me. It’s a merit system. It’s a merit system. I was like, “Excuse me. When it comes to men, it’s a need system. You perceive their needs and give them what they need.”
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
Yes, and that’s one of the things I always teach the women when I’m teaching women about how to advance and how to get ahead and, in fact, successfully navigating the halls of academic medicine. I tell them, “We, all of us, women in particular, think it’s a meritocracy, and if you just keep your head down and do your work, you’ll get noticed and somebody will reward you. And, no, that’s not true.” Even today it’s not true, and so you have to know how to promote yourself. You have to make sure that you come in and you just don’t sit in your office all day, that you interact, etc. So, yes, you’re absolutely correct.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Well, tell me kind of the next move, because you went then overseas. How did that happen? And what an interesting experience.
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
That is probably the most remarkable story, I think, of it all, because I finished my PhD and I started to get a taste of—so they wanted me to stay on as faculty at MUSC, except they had been taking me out to—taking me off the farm, if you will, and taking me to meetings where I was meeting people and see what was going on. And I realized that every time I came back there, I didn’t want to be back there. I wanted to be—I was ready for the big city, if you will. So I applied for postdocs, which they said, “Yes, absolutely go do a postdoc and then come back here,” and I applied to, I don’t know, twenty. I can’t remember how many. One was MD Anderson. I wasn’t accepted here. But two accepted me. One was Stanford and the other was a lab in London. So I had gotten the acceptance from Stanford and was asked to go there and interview. And prior to that—so the lab in London—I mean, Stanford was no slouch. It was very well known in the field and had really terrific people. But the lab in London, it’s called the Gray Lab. One of the founders of kind of radiation therapy—and, in fact, there’s a unit which is called the Gray, which measures radiation dose—he started this lab, and it was Mecca in the field, and I wanted to go there. And I remember talking to my father and saying, “You know, Dad, I really want to go to London.” They didn’t want me to go to London, of course. It was too far away. But he realized that I kind of always do what I wanted to do. (laughs)
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Can’t keep Elizabeth home. (laughter)
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
Yes, right, couldn’t keep her home, you know. So he said, “Well, Elizabeth, they can say yes and they can say no, but if you don’t ask them, you’re never going to get it.” So I said, “Okay.” So I wrote the letter, and when I got back from the trip, on my desk in my lab there was a letter from the Gray Lab. When I came back from Stanford and thought I was going to go to Stanford, there was a letter from the Gray Lab, and it said, “Please come.” I was working on normal tissues and the radiation effect on normal tissues. They were a lab that did a lot of tumor work, and so they were just beginning to get in the normal tissue field, and that was my area. So I said, “Okay,” and so off I went. I put my luggage—or all my furniture in storage, the little bit I had, gave my dad my car that I had just bought, and put three trunks on a ship and jumped on an airplane and moved to London and knew nobody.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Wow.
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
Had met the head of the lab one time. Other than that, knew nobody.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Wow. That’s incredible.
Recommended Citation
Travis, Elizabeth L. PhD and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 2: Choosing Opportunities to Develop a Research Career: A Growing Awareness of Gender Issues" (2014). Interview Chapters. 1020.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1020
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