Chapter 18: Women at MD Anderson and Becoming a Leader
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Description
Dr. Kleinerman begins this chapter by talking about the respective responsibilities of mentors and mentees. She tells a story about a regular dinner support-group of women faculty. Dr. Kleinerman describes the different ways that male and female faculty members approach her for mentoring.
Next, she talks about efforts to develop the visibility of women at MD Anderson around the time when she arrived. She describes issues she wanted to push forward: a day care center and a four-day work week option. She observes that the community of woman at MD Anderson has become stronger, but otherwise there is no movement to change the culture for women at the upper levels of the institution.
Dr. Kleinerman next sketches what women bring to leadership. She quotes Dr. Isaiah “Josh” Filder [Oral History Interview] who says that it will take men recognizing the situation to change it.
Identifier
KleinermanES_04_20140618_C18
Publication Date
6-18-2014
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Eugenie Kleinerman, MD, Oral History Interview, June 18, 2014
Topics Covered
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center - Diversity Issues The Leader The Mentor Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Religion Leadership Mentoring Critical Perspectives on MD Anderson Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Religion Women and Minorities at Work
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Disciplines
History of Science, Technology, and Medicine | Oncology | Oral History
Transcript
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Well, as you were describing this issue with needing more translational research in cell therapy and transplant, you know, the persona of the division is one with the development of the careers of the faculty who are working on this, so it’s a simultaneous development issue, you know, the individual equals the collective, in a sense. So, yeah, you can’t make a person’s career for him or her. (laughs)
Eugenie Kleinerman, MD:
No, no, and it’s interesting. So we have a women faculty get-together every other month that’s led by Dr. Schwartz, and so she decided that she was going to assign everybody to read certain chapters in Sheryl Sandberg’s book, Lean In. So the chapter we discussed yesterday was “Are You My Mentor?” And one of the things that Sheryl says early in the book is she hates it when women come up to her and say, “Will you be my mentor?” What does that mean? And, you know, what is your responsibility as the mentee? You can’t just say, “Please mentor me. Help me.” “Well, where do you want to go? What are the things—?” So what we did yesterday was I actually put it out on the table. I said, “Okay, well, what other things do you think that you need help on in your career? Where are the weaknesses? You can’t just sit back and say, ‘Somebody’s going to notice that I’m great and give me the opportunity, or somebody’s going to notice that I am weak in this area and help me.’” And so one of the women said, “Oh, you know, I’ve never thought about it, but I was just appointed section chief a year ago, and I’m struggling with how do I implement my role as the chief. How do I organize that? And I never thought I should come to you to ask for advice.” I said, “Well—.” So I charged everybody, “Think about what are the things that are lacking. But if you don’t tell Dr. Schwartz and myself and the other senior members, how are we supposed to know?”
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Right, right. Interesting.
Eugenie Kleinerman, MD:
Very interesting.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah.
Eugenie Kleinerman, MD:
Whereas a man would just come into your office, and my young male faculty members do that. They come in and they say, “Genie, I need help with this. What do you think I should do with this?” Or, “Who can I contact with this?” Or, “I don’t know how to approach this.” And we sit down and we do it. And it wasn’t until yesterday I realized there are—I don’t think maybe there’s one faculty member who comes in and asks my advice or help or navigating, “What should I do? Who do you know? How should I approach this?”
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
What do you think that’s about? I mean, why aren’t women, even after all this time, doing it?
Eugenie Kleinerman, MD:
Well, we talked about that yesterday, and one of the young faculty members said, “Well, that’s because it’s hardwiring. We’re different, and we just like to accommodate.” So I said to her, “You can’t use that as a crutch all your life.” “Well, but it’s really hard.” I said, “Yeah, it’s really hard, but, you know, you have to take some responsibility. Again, this is as the mentee or whoever, if you’re going to want to get ahead, you’re going to have to work on this.” And I think to a large part that’s right. We don’t want to—I think a lot of it’s conditioning. They were saying it’s hardwiring. I think it’s conditioning. Women, you don’t want to because you’ll be called a bitch or you’ll be called aggressive or hard or all the things that are—I mean, if you call a guy aggressive, that’s okay.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Right. Sure.
Eugenie Kleinerman, MD:
You call him hard, that’s okay. He’s hard edges.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
That’s okay, which is good.
Eugenie Kleinerman, MD:
Yeah. So we need to get less insulted if somebody says you’re tough. Yeah, okay.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Mm-hmm. It’s funny that this is still the same conversation happening as it was in the seventies and sixties. (laughs) Well, it kind of leads to my next set of questions, which is about the whole issue of women at the institution and the fact that you are the first female division head. I wanted to ask you about the significance of that and also your role in women faculty issues since you’ve come to the institution, because it was in a key time, ’84.
Eugenie Kleinerman, MD:
Yes, it was in a key time, and, fortunately, I had wonderful colleagues, Dr. Travis [Oral History Interview], of course, and she was very motivated and engaged me at the time, and we did little things like there was a doctors’ dining room at the time. I’m sure she must have told you the story. So we decided we were going to sit at the center table, so we did that. We thought about—we tried to bring up issues that we felt were important to young women, like stopping the tenure clock so that if we had a baby or—and we made it more general, so it was male or female, if you had a baby or an adoption or a sick parent or whatever, you could stop the tenure clock. One of the things that I felt very strongly about doing that never materialized because UT said we can’t do it is, I was on tenure, and to be on a tenure track or tenured, you have to work 100 percent. Now, the way I managed it is I just cut out a lot of travel. I just didn’t go to national meetings so that I could work my full, you know, time, but tailor the hours so that I could get home for dinner or be there at breakfast or whatever. And I realized, when I looked around, that many of my male colleagues were gone so much to these national meetings, that I was really there more than they were there. So I thought, why can’t someone, a faculty member, choose to be 80 percent, get 80 percent salary, 80 percent benefits, whatever, but stay on the tenure track? And the answer was no, which I think is absurd, because, again, if you look at the time put in, they were there less than I was. They were present because they’re off traveling. We have thirty days’ leave, so that’s six weeks. So you add it up, that’s probably about 20 percent. So you can be gone six weeks and still be 100 percent. So there will be your 80 percent. You have no external leave. I would say fine, give people—I don’t want to say just women, because there are single fathers now—give them the option to stay on tenure track. You still have to accomplish everything that you have to accomplish to get your promotion and renewal tenure, but you don’t have to be here 100 percent. You can be here. You can work four days a week.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Mm-hmm. Interesting. Yeah.
Eugenie Kleinerman, MD:
So that was—
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
This was a UT system issue?
Eugenie Kleinerman, MD:
Yes. I think it was the Dark Ages that we have to be doing that. But anyway, so we tried to think of things that would support young women. We wanted to have a daycare facility. That was tried and apparently failed, but I don’t know why it failed. And I think if somebody really wanted to make it work, it could have worked.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
It seems surprising that there isn’t one.
Eugenie Kleinerman, MD:
Uh-huh. Right.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Given the levels of expertise here.
Eugenie Kleinerman, MD:
Right. Right. So those are the things that I was involved in early on.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Now, how would you characterize changes or lack of changes from the mid-eighties when you came to today? What was the attitude or climate when you arrived?
Eugenie Kleinerman, MD:
Well, one thing’s changed, I think that there are many more women faculty here, but I think when we analyze it, they’re mostly at the assistant professor level there’s a higher percentage. I think there’s more of us that talk about these issues so there’s more of a community where you can discuss things and commiserate, and so that in itself is therapeutic. It wasn’t there when I first came.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Have you seen cultural changes, you know, including communities of men vis-à-vis acceptance of women or support of women?
Eugenie Kleinerman, MD:
I think there’s lip service to it. Some people are better than others. Dr. Fidler was always accepting. Don Podoloff, who was chief of Diagnostic Imaging when I became chair. But at the upper-institutional level, I mean, it’s been thirteen years and I’m the only woman division head.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Mm-hmm. And I do have to confess that when I saw that I thought, “Well, and it’s in Pediatrics.”
Eugenie Kleinerman, MD:
And you’re absolutely right. I’m sorry, you’re absolutely right. It would never have happened. In fact, after I became division head and I sat on the search committee for a department chair in Medicine or a division head—maybe it was before, I don’t know—one of the men in Cancer Medicine said, “There is no woman that is qualified in this country to be head of the Division of Cancer Medicine.” So I think there is more awareness and I think I hear that they try to get women division head—they try to recruit them. Again, I can’t comment on what the failure has been, but I think there are other indications. I don’t know why Dr. Travis is an associate vice president. She should be a vice president. She’s done more and shown her success. People call on her when they’re trying to start programs. She should be a vice president. We have no women faculty that are vice presidents. Women faculty. And it’s not only in the upper—it’s not only women. They’re all white men. It’s not good for such a diverse institution, and it’s not good in this day and age.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah. I mean, it’s kind of interesting, when I was sitting in the reception area, I picked up The Messenger, and the front of the magazine was all white men, and then as you get back into the less important features, then you start getting, quote, “diversity.” And I thought, “Wow, that kind of says a lot.” (laughs)
Eugenie Kleinerman, MD:
Right, because there’s a voice that you’re not getting.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah. And what do you think that voice is?
Eugenie Kleinerman, MD:
I—
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Or the leadership perspective? Or what is it that women bring to the table?
Eugenie Kleinerman, MD:
Well, I think, you know, a different way of looking at things, a more personal community interactive—I’m not finding the word I want. Give-and-take, working things out. Are we really looking at this the right way? Is there something else we’re not hearing? Are you really sure that this is the right thing to do? Sorry. I mean, you know, I don’t know. I mean, I can only speak for myself of things that I would bring up. But it’s just a perspective of another point of view. So as I said, it’s not only women; we’ve no African Americans, we have no Vietnamese, we have no Hispanic.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
How does MD Anderson compare with other institutions in this regard?
Eugenie Kleinerman, MD:
I don’t know. I will tell you, in terms of women, I think at major hospitals there’s a lack of women on Board of Directors, and what’s shocking is it’s even at Children’s Hospitals, which you would think would be very proactive in terms of having women on your Board of Directors.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Very interesting.
Eugenie Kleinerman, MD:
So I think we sort of reflect the culture of the country, still, and I think that was evident in Sheryl Sandberg’s book. And as my husband likes to say, “It’s going to take men recognizing this to really change it. Women can only do so much, but until we, as men, say we’re going to correct this, it isn’t going to change.”
Recommended Citation
Kleinerman, Eugenie S. MD and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 18: Women at MD Anderson and Becoming a Leader" (2014). Interview Chapters. 1414.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1414
Conditions Governing Access
Open
