Chapter 21: A View of Women’s Careers at MD Anderson
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Description
Dr. Elting offers observations and personal experiences to illustrate changes in the climate for women at MD Anderson.
She talks about challenges when she was not accorded respect or opportunities. She notes that she was the fortieth woman at MD Anderson to be promoted to full-professor.
Dr. Elting observes that the executive leadership at MD Anderson expresses concern about women’s representation, but this was not repeated at the mid-level of management until Dr. Elizabeth Travis [Oral History Interview] began working on advancement for women. Dr. Elting explains why she was reluctant to align herself with the Women Faculty Organization and Women Faculty Programs. She observes that women have an equal chance at becoming a department chair, but not at rising any higher. She explains why this is the case.
Dr. Elting points out some differences in the ways that men and women look at their subject matter, particularly the way men are quicker think in entrepreneurial ways about their work. She explains how she developed this perspective.
Identifier
EltingL_04_20150423_C21
Publication Date
4-23-2015
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Linda S. Elting, DrPh, Oral History Interview, April 23, 2015
Topics Covered
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center - Diversity Issues; Professional Path; Experiences Related to Gender, Race, Ethnicity; Critical Perspectives; Critical Perspectives on MD Anderson; Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Religion; Women and Minorities at Work; Leadership; Mentoring; Obstacles, Challenges; Experiences of Injustice, Bias
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 A. Rosolowski, PhD:
OK. Well, I wanted to shift topics a little bit and talk about the issue of diversity at the institution, your experience as a woman coming up through the ranks, and your observations about women at the institution over the past decades.
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
I guess I would say as a caveat first in many situations where I felt that I didn't get the respect or couldn't find the credibility or didn't get appointed to things, I often interpreted those situations more as my having been known to everyone as a classified employee and a nurse rather than my being a woman. I think I was aware as I came up that there weren't any women (laughter) in the senior ranks. And I wasn't promoted to professor until I don't remember when. Late "˜90s or early 2000s. But I was only the forty something full professor who was a woman in the history of the hospital. So I think at that point I had begun to recognize both that there was an issue in medicine and science in general and that there was an absence of women in high leadership positions in the institution and that I felt it was a concern to the people at the top, because that was a time when they brought in Margaret Kripke [Oral History Interview] to head a department. Then she became whatever her title was. It wasn't provost, but it was that job.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
VP of Academic Affairs.
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
Yeah, something like that. And there was a lot of lip service and a lot of concern about this issue from the top of the institution. And I always thought that was a positive thing. What didn't happen or wasn't happening was that that same concern and awareness was raised in the intermediate management level, the department chairs, the clinic heads, those sorts of people. And I think it's just because there were so many more of them that you would expect in a much bigger group to find a few people who had heads in the sand or a few people who had true prejudices or those sorts of things. So I guess about the time I was becoming a senior person I think I would say I felt like the institution officially had a concern about providing opportunities for women and opportunities for people of color, but that it wasn't necessarily trickling down into the level of people who do the everyday job of mentoring, promoting, encouraging, and opening doors. And I don't think that really happened until Liz Travis started the programs where she started justshe was on every single search committee. She reviewed every single list of people who were getting merit increases from every department every year, and started pointing out to people well, look, these are all boys. You want a chairman for a department of disparities. All of your applicants are white males. What's the deal? So I think when that started it became an issue more to the forefront in everybody's mind.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Were you involved at all in Women Faculty Programs in the early
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
No.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
What was the reason for that?
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
I think I was too busy. (laughter) I was just really busy trying towell, I will say this, and it probably sounds terrible. Maybe I'll decide you shouldn't tell anybody this. When they started the Women Faculty Organization, I did not want to attend or be seen there because I didn't want to be a member of the women's auxiliary. I wanted to be a member of the good old boys' network. And it took me a while to decide that you could go there and still be accepted. I didn't want to be one of those people who always complained that they didn't get the job because they were a woman.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Women have a lot of complex responses to other women who are taking an active role in that area. I mean I remember my own complex reactions in other institutions and so I understand your reaction.
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
Well, I thought it was great for anybody who wanted to do that. But I wasn't worried about what other women thought. I didn't need to be. None of them were bosses. (laughter) What I needed to be worried about was what men thought. And I didn't want a negative reaction from them. So I know that there was a point where I was not getting opportunities and where I was being held back because my chairman didn't think a woman's career was important as a man's.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Wow.
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
And I don't think I realized how bad it was until I got out and had a chairman who really wanted me to succeed. And I recognized that that was going on and
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
What do you think prevented you from recognizing it in the moment?
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
Well, for one thing, I idolized him and his contribution to science and to patient care. For another thing, I was junior. I expected that I would be treated like a junior. I was a science person in a clinical department where physicians always got first choice at everything and all the best opportunities. And so all of those things stacked up against having opportunities.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Right. And a rationale that it wasn't just because you were a woman.
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
Yeah. So I think that's what it was. But once I got out of there it was like a new job. All of a sudden people appointed me to committees and they valued the work I did on those committees and doors got opened and I met so many more people around the institution and outside as well. So I guess that's a fair appraisal of my experience. Things are very different now.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
One thing that's interested me over the course of our sessions is that when you've talked aboutyou've presented many of your decisions to take on challenges as a very intentional career move. Is that something that you felt in the moment that you were doing this? Or is that in retrospect that you realized you were gravitating?
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
No. Most of them were intentional career moves. Things like when I said I would chair the new IRB. I didn't think I could do that job. I had no formal training. I had no informal training. (laughter) I had nothing.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Flying by the seat of our pants here.
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
I'll show you my training. It's this little book right here. They gave me this book, which is the federal regulations, and they said, "Here, you can be the IRB chair." (laughter) But I think I realized, and I think I was right, they were the right decisions. I realized in all of those situations where I didn't feel that I had the training or experience or maybe even the skills to do those jobs that I wouldn't get another chance. Opportunities are few and far between. And I can say in retrospect particularly at that point if you're a woman, and particularly if you're not a physician. And so when you get those opportunities you have to take them. It's not a good time or you don't have the skills, that's too bad. You just do it. You have to do it then, because you won't get that opportunity again.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
You said there have been a lot of changes. Where do you see things now in terms of the environment for women and representation of women at various levels of the institution?
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
Just from my perspective, I think women have an equal chance of getting department chair jobs. I don't think they have an equal chance of getting higher than that. And to some extent that's because the pool of people is small. But additionally I think that the decisions about who gets executive positions has as much to do with skill and training and ability as it has to do with putting together a team that can work comfortably together. And because I think that is taken into a lot of consideration, when the team is already men, they're not necessarily comfortable with a woman in a role. So I think that equally qualified people who are men and women, the men will be chosen for those. There are still women who get those top positions sometimes because they're the best person, and everybody knows it. But I think in the situation where it's a toss-up, at the executive level, men get the jobs. And I think if the decision is made external to this institution, external to academia, like by boards of regents, they never get the job. (laughter) That's just if it's made by a bunch of people who run companies for a living. They choose people who look like them and who talk like them and express themselves the same way, who have similar goals and objectives. And so when the last president was chosen there was a short list that was published and everyone, 100% of every person who made a comment, said that the woman on the list was a token, because there was never a chance a woman would be chosen for that job to head this institution. And it wasn't a choice made in an academic way at all. It was made external to the institution. So I'm not sure there's an opportunity for a woman president of MD Anderson in the near future.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Even at the executive table right now.
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
Or a woman chancellor of the University of Texas either. (laughter) But I do believe thatsorry.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
That's all right. Do you need to take
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
No. I do believe that in terms of the academic selection like for department chairmen and things like that, I think women are seriously considered in exactly the same criteria as men.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
You mentioned that the selection committees want to bring in people that have the same goals and ways of expressing themselves. Are there ways in which women have different goals or have different ways of expressing themselves that makes themthe underlying question is do women bring something different to a leadership table. Always a hard question to answer.
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
Yeah, that's a tough question. I guess what I would say is that in my experience of women in my circle and in the general people I know there aren't very many women scientists or physicians who think about providing care, doing science, developing new drugs from a for-profit perspective. Most of the women I know who do science and who do medicine didn't go into it for that reason. Now they recognize that at some point we need to get new treatments into use. That means if it's a new drug it has to be marketed. But I don't think there are that many women that I know who are doing science who think about it that much. And while I think women are equally entrepreneurial about their careers and their programs, that whole business perspective of turning this into a profit is not something that I ever hear women talk about. It's just real rare. Whereas I have a lot of colleagues who are men, it's as if they're multitasking in their brains. And at the same time they're thinking about how to design this drug, they're thinking about how it ought to be advertised and marketed, and about which of the pharmaceutical companies would be best to do this. And I think that's the mentality that businesspeople who are making selections of executives, I think that's what they look for. Whether it's right or wrong I don't know. But I never hear women talking about bringing what they do to market.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Interesting.
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
Maybe I just have weird friends. (laughter) But I know when I talk in those terms, when I say something to someone like but this is such a small niche in the general scheme of things and how would we ever get a drug company interested, or why would a drug company ever invest, or anybody invest, in something so small, you get this strange look, because it's more a notion of science for the sake of science, because every time we learn more it gets us closer to important answers. That kind of a focus that's somewhat different.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Not contextualizing it so much in the business. But you obviously have that perspective, you think about those issues.
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
I learned that perspective though. It's not one that came to me naturally. It's one that I became aware of in working with drug companies that were developing drugs. I became aware that we weren't ever going to get anything studied or get important new developments if somebody who was in the for-profit world wasn't willing to invest their dollars.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
So do you think that from a mentoring perspective, mentoring of young researchers, mentoring of young faculty, women need to think about expanding their focus to take this in? How important is that?
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
It depends on where you want to take your career. But it's difficult to learn those things, because most of the drug company people are also men, and so they don't seek out women to ask them questions. And you start to get that perspective when you're appointed to advisory boards or those sorts of things. And people appoint their friends to advisory boards, the people they're comfortable with. And so you learn those skills and perspectives from the people who do that. And if you don't get your foot in the door you never get that perspective. Now people who come from economics and business backgrounds have that perspective. But we don't mix with them so much when we're in science and medicine. And so expanding that focus is difficult. The way I got it was just in interfacing with drug company people. And they needed my kind of information, my kind of work. And I didn't understand why. I had to get them to explain to me what is it that I do that interests you and why, and how do you use that.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
And what did they say?
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
My first interactions with them was when they would come to me and say, "Well, we have this new compound we've developed. But we have to prove to the FDA that it's needed." And so they needed the epidemiologic background work done at the population level to show how big a problem it is and how much it costs and what impact could it have if it worked and those sorts of things. And from interacting with the drug company people at that level, often the marketing people at that level, that's where you learn to look at it from a different perspective. So it's a tough thing. It would be a hard thing to advise someone to do because it's hard to say how to do it. How would you pick that up? It's hands on.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
We're already at five minutes after 3:00 and I don't want to take you over. I have a few more questions. And I don't know if you want to do that today or if you'd like me to do another session next week or the week ager. Whatever works best for you.
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
I probably need to finish up today.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
OK. Because I figure you're a very busy person. (laughter)
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
Well, I have a grant application that's going to be due. So I'm starting to clear my calendar. (laughter)
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yes. All right. Well, why don't we finish up for today? And I want to thank you for your time. And I'm turning off the recorder.
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
Wait. No. I need to finish up today rather than future. (laughter)
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Oh, you want to finish the questions. Oh, OK. Excellent, excellent. I'm glad we clarified that. No, that works out great for me too.
Recommended Citation
Elting, Linda E. DPh and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 21: A View of Women’s Careers at MD Anderson" (2015). Interview Chapters. 725.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/725
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