Conversations with History welcomes UC Berkeley’s Professor Mary Ann Mason to discuss her career as a university official, historian, and lawyer, as well as the changing role of women in academia and society.
Mason says moving to Berkeley at the end of the 60’s raised her awareness of issues, particularly the women’s rights movement, which was just beginning to gain momentum.
She was teaching history at a small college in Oakland when she joined the women’s consciousness raising movement. They held a gathering of women teaching history at four year colleges and they realized what a small group they were. There were only eight of them, in all of California. As for the UCs at the time, Mason reports that there were only 1.3 women historians for each campus.
Throughout her time in Berkeley, Mason watched the equality of women improve. When she got hired as a professor by UC Berkeley in 1989, about 15 percent of the faculty were women, which she reports is a huge improvement from just 2 percent in 1972.
Hear how these cultural and structural changes came about in “Achieving Equality for Women with Mary Ann Mason.”
Be sure to see what other programs are available in the Conversations with History series!
