Overview

Starting in 1967, a time when fewer than 1% of women completed any education beyond four years of college, the Washington State University (WSU) Sociology Department dared to hire three female faculty members who became supportive lifelong friends: Lois B. DeFleur, Sandra Ball-Rokeach, and Marilyn Ihinger-Tallman. Each served as a role model and paved the way for those who followed. In chronologically based chapters, the three colleagues discuss their childhoods, educational and research efforts, personal lives, and career advancements. They note major influences, share what they learned, and acknowledge assistance they received along the way. Though all married professors, they fought to be known as individual scholars, overcoming quotas, nepotism rules, sexual discrimination and harassment, and intense societal pressure to follow traditional female roles. Each also faced significant personal challenges: balancing family life, divorce, cancer diagnoses, the illness of a partner. These trailblazers' impressive careers parallel larger national events and the onset of increasing opportunities for women. Initially associate or assistant professors, all became full professors when it was exceedingly rare. Dr. DeFleur later held positions as dean, provost, and university president. Dr. Ball-Rokeach gained international status as a major media sociologist, and Dr. Ihinger-Tallman became WSU's first female chair of the Sociology Department. Their inspiring stories highlight the importance of community and offer meaningful guidance to current women academics.

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Reviews

"""A rich source of hypotheses about how and why the proportion of white men who are faculty and university leaders is decreasing. Readers with a bent toward history may find it intriguing to see how the addition of female faculty was not tokenism. Their appointments strengthened departments."" --Don A. Dillman, Regents Professor, WSU Department of Sociology, and Deputy Director for Research and Development, Social and Economic Sciences Research Center ""The part I especially like is how each of the authors faced different female faculty challenges, consistent with the times."" --Don A. Dillman, Regents Professor, WSU Department of Sociology, and Deputy Director for Research and Development, Social and Economic Sciences Research Center ""The story of how academia--and public life in general--has been transformed by feminism and other social upheavals needs to be told in this sort of granularity."" --Larry Gross, Professor, Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California"

"""A rich source of hypotheses about how and why the proportion of white men who are faculty and university leaders is decreasing. Readers with a bent toward history may find it intriguing to see how the addition of female faculty was not tokenism. Their appointments strengthened departments.""—Don A. Dillman, Regents Professor, WSU Department of Sociology, and Deputy Director for Research and Development, Social and Economic Sciences Research Center ""The story of how academia--and public life in general--has been transformed by feminism and other social upheavals needs to be told in this sort of granularity.""—Larry Gross, Professor, Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California ""The part I especially like is how each of the authors faced different female faculty challenges, consistent with the times.""—Don A. Dillman, Regents Professor, WSU Department of Sociology, and Deputy Director for Research and Development, Social and Economic Sciences Research Center"

Author Information

Lois B. Defleuer is president emerita, SUNY BInghampton. She served as president at Binghampton from 1990 to 2010. She was dean of Washington State University's College of Humanities and Social Sciences from 1981 to 1986, and directed the NIMH Doctoral Training Program in Deviant Behavior from 1972 to 1979. She was provost at University of Missouri, Columbia, from 1986 to 1990. Sandra Ball-Rokeach is professor emerita at the Annenberg School for Communication, and the department of sociology at the University of Southern California (USC). She served as professor of communication and sociology at USC from 1986 to 2019. Prior to that she taught sociology at Washington State University from 1972 to 1986, where she was associate director of the Social Research Center (now SESRC) from 1976 to 1978. Marilyn Ihinger-Talman is professor emerita in sociology at Washington State University, where she taught from 1977 to 1999, and also served as department chair. She was listed as a noteworthy sociology educator by Marquis Who's Who. She has co-authored four academic books on families. Betty Houchin Winfield, Ph.D., is University of Missouri Curators' Professor Emerita with appointments in the Missouri School of Journalism and the Department of Political Science. Her first job following graduate school was as assistant professor at Washington State University's Murrow School of Communication, where she came into contact with the three women featured in We Few, We Academic Sisters.

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