Title
The Needs of Women Faculty – Childcare
Files
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Identifier
GrimmE_01_20190806_Clip02
Publication Date
8-6-2019
Publisher
The Making Cancer History® Voices Oral History Collection, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
City
Houston, Texas
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Transcript
Charles Balch, MD
Liz, one of the things you touched on that I think is very important historically is the role of women in the faculty, which you’ve had a leadership role in. I wonder if you could just, for the record, talk about how MD Anderson in its evolution, with just a few people at the beginning, has really championed the professional development of women faculty at MD Anderson, and your role in that.
Elizabeth E. Grimm, PhD
Yeah, well, I think what I’ve done mostly was just by example. I was not ever the leader of the women’s group, and we really have to thank Liz Travis [oral history interview] for taking that on. When I first came, she was already here, and she, on her own time, set up data and analysis to compare salaries of women to men, that kind of thing. So I really appreciated that, and we’ve been good friends ever since. I think that just being present, and having women fellows, and mentoring them, has been a great pleasure.
Charles Balch, MD
And to succeed.
Elizabeth E. Grimm, PhD
All of them, I think, have done something better, but they were—I mean, they were great students. I had great students, and I’m so proud of all the women that worked in my lab or I mentored otherwise. I’ve been on many committees of those that didn’t even work in my lab. But it was tough, because there was still a change, a society change of the … Some men thought everybody should be home, (laughs) taking care of the kids. I think the one thing I have not solved that probably isn’t good for this institution is that we still have no childcare here, and we lose women faculty, quite honestly. We lose women faculty. They don’t understand you can’t get good help, or how to do it, or they don’t have the finances. They don’t have a surgeon husband. So I think that’s—I have failed to that. I had several times in different instances where I stood up and said, “Here’s—we do a childcare center there. We do a child... Boston has the Longwood Childcare Center, and why can’t we do it?” And it just—we got every excuse.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD
What is the obstacle, do you think? Why do the excuses keep coming, and what are they?
Elizabeth E. Grimm, PhD
Believe me, I argued—I couldn’t see them, other than liability was the one, and I think this institution’s kind of been afraid of things over the years, afraid of new things. And they got people onto [administrative] staff that didn’t need that, and that kind of cut out a lot of [faculty] women, and women left. We have wonderful fellows. I think the fellowship classes, at least in medicine now, where I’m mostly—and I don’t know exactly about surgery—but they’re more than half women.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD
Yeah. Is it unusual for a cancer center like this not to support the female faculty or parents with a childcare center?
Elizabeth E. Grimm, PhD
I think we’re special. MD Anderson is special, because other cancer centers are associated with a university, and they do have childcare centers.
Charles Balch, MD
At the university level.
Elizabeth E. Grimm, PhD
At the university. So once you are brought in to a training position you get access to that. Now, some of our grad students have access to the graduate school housing, but the fellows I don’t think do. They never do. So that’s been a problem.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD
What else do you feel needs to move in order to bring the institution forward with women?
Elizabeth E. Grimm, PhD
I’d love to see a woman president someday, if someone would like that. More women at the top. We now have less women chairs and full professors. I don’t know the statistics, but we’ve had a little decline. So we haven’t finished the job with respect to that. And with this education level, and the number of graduates from medical schools and PhD programs, with women being 50% in the med school classes now, why are they not here? And it’s been long enough that they should percolate up, and—
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD
Do you feel that...? I mean, I know from interviewing Dr. Travis, as well as others involved with women faculty programs—I can’t remember how it’s—the title has evolved now to encompass diversity—
Elizabeth E. Grimm, PhD
Yes, and minority, and—yeah. (laughs)
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD
Yes. But there’s been so much effort to educate people, how do we grow people’s careers. Do you feel—do you see that that has taken root, that division heads and department chairs are savvier about supporting people?
Elizabeth E. Grimm, PhD
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, the ones I deal with definitely are. Certainly, of course, Charles was the beginning key, yes.
Charles Balch, MD
Yeah, I think the numbers support that.
Elizabeth E. Grimm, PhD
Yes, I think they do.
Charles Balch, MD
But it still is unfinished business.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD
Right, there’s a ceiling there.
Elizabeth E. Grimm, PhD
Yeah, yeah. And we’re getting more women who have come from other cultures, and they want to achieve more, but I think it’s going to be the next generation of some of those, even though the women are physicians themselves. So it’s going to take a little time.
Charles Balch, MD
Yeah. But—
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD
Culture change is tough.
Elizabeth E. Grimm, PhD
It is tough, it is tough, but I have great hope.
Recommended Citation
Grimm, Elizabeth PhD; Balch, Charles M. MD; and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "The Needs of Women Faculty – Childcare" (2019). Race, Gender, & Work @ The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center: Triumphs of Houston’s Leading Hospital. 15.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_racegenderwork/15
