Alumni Spotlight
Ellen Agress, Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel-Communications of News America Incorporated in New York, is a 1968 graduate of the University of Michigan and an important supporter of Women’s Studies and the Institute for Research on Women and Gender. In Spring 2006, Ellen Agress talked with Abby Stewart, Professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies, about her law career, gender issues, the relationship between the academy and the corporate world, and women and philanthropy. Below are excerpts from that conversation.
I have been fortunate to have had a very interesting and rewarding career. For most of my career I have held senior legal positions in a very exciting industry (media/entertainment) for very exciting companies (NBC and Fox). In addition, my work involves interesting policy issues that make me the envy of other lawyers. But I have always been aware that my gender has had an effect on my career—in both positive and negative ways.
When I graduated from law school in 1971, being a woman probably helped me get my first job because the law firm that hired me felt compelled to finally have some female lawyers (I was their first and, at the time, only female lawyer). However, just like in law school where women comprised a mere five percent of my class, I felt very isolated, and worse, felt I had to prove myself on behalf of all women. My career path was also affected by my need (and desire) to balance work and family, including being a good mother to my two children. I therefore deliberately took jobs that gave me the time and flexibility I needed to be there for them when it was important, and avoided those that required regular work at night or on the weekends, even though those jobs were more lucrative.
Finally, I believe that women deal with colleagues and work-related issues in a way that’s different from men and, since it is typically men who evaluate a professional woman’s performance, I often felt those differences were an obstacle to my success in law firms and in certain corporate environments.
Unfortunately, I think some of the same issues remain. Women are now well represented at the professional entry level but are still poorly represented at the top—as CEOs, partners in law firms, tenured professors, etc. I think this is in part due to subconscious gender biases that persist and create obstacles to success for women in more structured careers, such as business, law, and medicine. I think this disparity is also the result of the failure of our society to solve effectively the career/family dilemma for women. Women have many more career possibilities than they did when I got out of school, but women still bear most of the burden of home management and child care. Those of us who moved into male-dominated careers 35 years ago thought we had to prove that a woman could “do it all”—could be Super Mom, the world’s best wife, and a high-powered career woman all at the same time. Fortunately, I don’t think young women try to achieve this impossible feat any more. But, as a result, many women ultimately choose not to take full advantage of the available career opportunities because of the juggling and the frustrations that go along with them.
The intellectual breakthroughs that happen with regularity at a university like Michigan can make a real difference to the corporate world, and it’s important to educate the private sector about the work at the university that can be of value beyond academia. For example, every major corporation and institution is concerned about diversity and is trying to find ways to recruit and retain qualified women. The private sector would probably learn a lot about how to achieve these goals from the work of Women’s Studies and IRWG. It would be wonderful to try to develop some kind of ongoing dialogue with interested corporations to help inform the faculty about the most important gender-related issues businesses are facing and to expose the businesses to the relevant research and teaching of Women’s/Gender Studies.
University Women’s Studies programs should continue their efforts to demonstrate how the academic study of gender issues can have an impact on real-world issues such as health care, child-raising, employment and other concerns for women.
I don’t believe there was a Women’s Studies Program the University of Michigan when I was a student there. In fact, my graduation pre-dated the “Women’s Movement,” so it didn’t occur to me that academic disciplines and issues could be approached from a woman’s perspective. But subsequent to my graduation—in law school, as a working professional, and as a working mother—I became increasingly aware of issues and concerns that are unique to women. It also became increasingly apparent to me that there wasn’t enough recognition or understanding of those issues and concerns, both inside and outside academia. I decided to support Women’s Studies at Michigan because I believe the program can help both male and female U-M students to broaden their understanding of the social, political and economic forces that uniquely affect women and to bring that understanding to bear on their personal and professional lives.
Economic power is the power to bring about change. If women want to see societal changes in the areas of health care for women, equal career opportunities, domestic violence and child care, they have to flex their economic muscles. I think it’s very important for women to use the “power of the purse” to support issues they care about so that those issues will get the attention they deserve.
To motivate women to open their check books in addition to giving of their time; to convince women that they can give to philanthropic causes that are different from the ones supported by their husbands; and to make women understand how philanthropy—regardless of the cause—can effect real change, can have real-world results and can make a real difference to individuals.
