Nice Girls: Women in the Business School presentation, 1971-1994

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Summary

Creators:
Phillips, Susan, Thornton, Anne, and West, Barbara
Extent:
.75 Linear Feet (2 boxes)
Language:
English
Preferred citation:

[identification of item], Nice Girls: Women in the Business School presentation (SC1348). Department of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, Calif.

Background

Scope and content:

Slides, 3 audio tapes, and scripts.

Biographical / historical:

The project was self-initiated and self-sponsored by the student creators (and one very supportive spouse), who were motivated to reflect upon and tell the story of their unique experiences as a very small minority of women students in a graduate program with an all-male faculty and a predominantly male student body.

While some photographs were taken during the prior ’70-71 school year, the majority of the photography, all of the voice recordings and the full show production occurred during the Summer of 1971, the summer break between our first and second years in the program. This self-produced multimedia show was motivated by the desire to document and share our extraordinary experience of being women MBA students in a very small gender minority in our class at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. While other Stanford professional graduate schools such as the Stanford Law School and Stanford School of Medicine were already educating classes with good percentages of female students, our MBA Class of 1972 had only five women students (three MBAs and two MBA/JDs) in a class of over 300 students and prior MBA classes had similarly small numbers of female students.

The completed show was presented to multiple audiences during the 1971-72 academic year including a performance given in the GSB auditorium as a special noontime program for the GSB student body, faculty and staff. The show was also performed about a month later for the Biz Wives, a student spouses' club.

At the invitation of Gary Williams, the GSB Admissions Dean, the three creators Anne, Barbara and Susan gave an invited presentation to the Graduate Business Admissions Council (a nation-wide consortium of Admissions Deans for elite U.S. graduate business schools). The creators and a fourth female classmate, Leonade Jones, accompanied Dean Williams on a GSB MBA recruiting tour to Eastern colleges and the show was a featured part of the campus presentations aimed at encouraging female applicants. As a result of Dean Williams’s initiatives and leadership, the number of female applicants and female students grew steadily in the immediately following years.

There was also a formal presentation of the show around 1994-95 for a Stanford GSB conference of women students and alumni.

Acquisition information:
Gift of Susan Phillips, Anne Thornton, and Barbara West, 2017.
Physical location:
Special Collections and University Archives materials are stored offsite and must be paged 48 hours in advance. For more information on paging collections, see the department's website: http://library.stanford.edu/spc.
Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Access and use

Restrictions:

The materials are open for research use. Audio-visual materials are not available in original format, and must be reformatted to a digital use copy.

Terms of access:

All requests to reproduce, publish, quote from, or otherwise use collection materials must be submitted in writing to the Head of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, California 94305-6064. Consent is given on behalf of Special Collections as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission from the copyright owner. Such permission must be obtained from the copyright owner, heir(s) or assigns. See: http://library.stanford.edu/spc/using-collections/permission-publish. Restrictions also apply to digital representations of the original materials. Use of digital files is restricted to research and educational purposes.

Preferred citation:

[identification of item], Nice Girls: Women in the Business School presentation (SC1348). Department of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, Calif.

Location of this collection:
Stanford University Archives, Green Library
557 Escondido Mall
Stanford, CA 94305-6064, US
Contact:
(650) 725-1022
specialcollections@stanford.edu
Website