Women's History Month turns the spotlight on NMSU's Women's Studies Program and efforts to bring more women into science and math.

By Jeff Berg

My brain freezes when Leslie Morrell, program coordinator for New Mexico State University's Women's Studies Program, asks me the question: "Do you know the name of the woman who wrote the very first computer program, which is still in use today?"

NMSU scientists Cindy Waddell, Barbara Hunter and Sharon Smith exemplify the push to increase the number of female faculty members in science, technology, engineering and math.

Slightly embarrassed, I look to my right at the student journalist who is visiting with Morrell and Dr. Joan Jensen for information on the activities planned for Women's History Month in March (see box). I see that he, from University Communications, young, red-haired and wiry and also a person of the male gender, appears equally as dumbfounded as I.

As it turns out, the correct answer is Ada Lovelace (nee Byron, daughter of the poet, Lord Byron). She was the precursor of the cursor—so to speak. In 1834, via another woman of note, Mary Somerville, Lovelace, who was all of 17, first heard of a new idea by Charles Babbage, who had posited about a new calculating machine that "could not only foresee but could act on that foresight." This was dubbed an "Analytical Engine." Moved by the "universality of his ideas," Lovelace later translated an article from the French by an Italian mathematician, Louis Menabrea, who had summarized Babbage's work on the project, which Babbage had reported on at a seminar in 1841.

By now married and the mother of three, Lovelace shared her translation with Babbage, who suggested she add her own notes—thus increasing the length of the article threefold. Dr. Betty Alexandra Toole of Yale University writes: "In her article, published in 1843, Lady Lovelace's prescient comments included her predictions that such a machine might be used to compose complex music, to produce graphics, and would be used for both practical and scientific use. She was correct."

Lovelace suggested to Babbage a plan for how his "engine' could calculate Bernoulli numbers, a special series important to number theory in mathematics. "This plan is now regarded as the first 'computer program,'" Toole continues. "A software language developed by the US Department of Defense was named 'Ada' in her honor in 1979."

This information strengthens my personal hypothesis that woman are much smarter than men.

Worldwide, Women's History Month has been going on a lot longer than one might suspect. It was originally begun as International Women's Day on March 19, 1911. A German Socialist, Klara Zetkin, who was inspired by an American commemoration of working women, was the organizer of the first International Women's Day. Socialists in Germany, Austria, Denmark and several other European countries started it as a protest of sorts, holding strikes and marches.

Closer to home and 70 years later, on August 4, 1981, the US Congress designated the week beginning March 7, 1982, as the first Women's History Week. In 1987 the entire month of March was officially decreed Women's History Month.

In 2007, the special month carries the theme of "Inventing the Future—Women in Science and Technology"—hence Morrell's choice of Ada Lovelace to stump me.

Lady Lovelace might have felt right at home in NMSU's Women's Studies Program, which officially began in 1991. Jensen, who was largely responsible for launching the program, began as acting director in 1989 and then became the program's first director. She is the author of 12 books, the most recent of which is Calling This Place Home: Women on the Wisconsin Frontier, 1850-1925, which she will be signing at a reception and booksigning event in her honor on Tuesday, March 6, from 4-5 p.m. at NMSU's Conroy Honors Center. Jensen has also authored more than 50 articles on US history. Although now retired from NMSU, she has come back this semester to teach a few classes, since the university has not hired a US women's history instructor for several years.

Jensen taught her first course in women's studies at UCLA before coming to NMSU in the mid-1970s. She recalls, "There were no texts for women's history, and the field was wide open. We wrote and wrote, and men need to know that we built the field. We felt we could do anything back then. We got the credentials to be professors, and then we said that now that we can teach, we are going to teach women's history."

She recalls the efforts she went through to make the Women's Studies Program a reality at NMSU. "I had to go before the university faculty committee for approval of the program." Her work paid off, as the committee's report said, as Jensen recalls, "that they didn't know they needed the program so badly.

"We started without any money, and couldn't even find a room to use on campus," Jensen goes on. "Finally the head of the math department said that he could find a room for us to use. The dean was very supportive, and we were able to find some used typewriters and furniture to use. The office was tiny, even more so when the grad assistant was working!"

Jensen had never built a department from scratch before, but had been a department head. "I was amazed at how hard it was," she says, "but I found that there were pockets of supportive people around who helped the program to survive."

A note of weariness, tinged with joy, enters her voice, when Jensen says, " I don't know how we did all that work—we just knew that it had to be done."

Before the Women's Studies Program came to be, the campus did support a Women's Center, which both Jensen and Morrell hope will become part of the campus community again someday.

Morrell came to NMSU in 2005, from Brandeis University in Massachusetts. She has raised seven children and is now working on her PhD in Judaic Studies.

She says that the former Women's Center was located in Garcia Hall, and offered a place for all women on campus to gather. "There were several programs, and occasionally, counseling services were made available. But the center was phased out, and there has been nothing like it since."

Dr. Lisa Bond-Maupin is now the director of the NMSU Women's Studies Program, a position she took on last fall. The proud mother of a daughter, Sarah, who is a student at Las Cruces' Onate High School, Bond-Maupin came to NMSU in 1995. Besides her duties as the director of women's studies, she is an associate professor in the Criminal Justice Department. Prior to coming here, she was at New Mexico Highlands University, where she served on the Women's Studies Steering Committee for five years. Bond-Maupin has also served as co-chair of the statewide New Mexico Women's Studies Conference.

She adds, "I've also taught one women's studies course on women living, working in, and visiting prisons in the US ("Women at the Wall"). My scholarship includes published articles on the depiction of women and gender on reality-crime television and on girls' experiences in the juvenile-justice system. "

I ask Bond-Maupin for her thoughts on how women are treated in the Las Cruces community. The question was based on previous interviews with directors of other minority programs at NMSU, Dr. Don Pepion (Blackfeet) of the American Indian Program (see the October 2006 Desert Exposure) and Festus Addo-Yobo, who is in charge of Black Studies (February 2006). Both had indicated that in spite of Las Cruces' reputation as a center of non-bias, more education about minorities wouldn't hurt the community.

Bond-Maupin replies that the status of women in the local community needs a great deal more research and investigative journalism to go beyond anecdotal information. That would then help develop a foundation of data on which to systematically advocate for change, she says: "We need to talk to women about their lives and value what they have to tell us. The community of women is so diverse, that it is also important not to write about our 'status' as if our struggles are all the same.

"There are many clear and well-documented issues that should concern us all," she goes on. "These include: Most women work outside of their homes and yet remain largely responsible for the work in their homes after their official work day ends (food prep, childcare, etc.). Women's contributions in their homes are undervalued and often overlooked. Women continue to be paid less for the same work as men. Women are profoundly under-represented in business and politics and over-represented in relatively low-paid service employment. Mothers raising children alone are often scapegoats for those seeking to blame someone else for our complex social problems. Women are most likely to be hurt or killed by a man with whom we have a close relationship. Women are the fastest growing group in prisons in the United States."

And yet Bond-Maupin doesn't view the status of women today as simply a litany of problems and social issues. "Women are also active creators and re-creators of the society," she points out. "Our ranks as students and professors and administrators at NMSU are growing and in some areas of the university we outnumber men." That includes the student body: As of fall 2006, NMSU had enrolled about 7,200 males, who are now far outnumbered by approximately 9,200 female students.

"We are everywhere (except the Oval Office) and we are here to stay," Bond-Maupin says. "Women's Studies values the contributions and experiences of all women and offers courses and programming designed to put them in the forefront of analysis and public conversation."

She notes the hard work and long hours that have gone into making this year's Women's History Month (WHM) observance a success. Says Bond-Maupin, "WHM at NMSU is devoted to elevating the scholarship and work of women who use science and technology to create, build and change their communities and worlds. The women whose work is featured are role models for young women skilled in math and science who want to live and work to their full potential but may be uncertain of the form of welcome they will receive. We are gratified to be partnering with the NMSU/NSF ADVANCE program to work to fulfill the university's mission of a growing body of women in science, math, and technology fields."

The ADVANCE program, which came to the campus in 2002, works to help increase the ranks of female tenure-track faculty members in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). It is sponsored by grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), and focuses on the idea of recruiting, retaining and advancing female faculty members to create a more diverse environment.

At NMSU, ADVANCE had an original goal of filling 31 STEM faculty openings that were brought on by a wave of retirements, thus increasing the number of women in science, technology, engineering and math positions by 20 percent.

But the program has been even more successful than its initial goal, as is noted on the ADVANCE Web site: "By the end of 2005, this goal had been surpassed, with the percentage of STEM female faculty increased by 46.7 percent. With oversight by a faculty subcommittee, start-up package enhancements totaling $841,329 were awarded to 22 women in 11 of the 19 STEM departments targeted by the program. The impact on NMSU has been notable: In the five years prior to ADVANCE, women accounted for 19.6 percent of all new STEM for 34.8 percent of all STEM hires."

"Women have always used technology, perhaps more than men," says Leslie Morrell of the Women's Studies Program. "I've been working with computers in one way or another since I was 15, and helped my brother with punch cards when he worked at IBM. While raising seven children, I did keypunch, was a technical editor, and did page making. Gone are the days of sitting around old archives."

Jensen, the history professor, smiles and gently disagrees with Morrell on her last statement: "I'm a historian, and love dusty old archives!"

Jensen continues, "I do think the education system needs to be redone. The technology is frustrating and inadequate, and it cuts people off instead of bringing them in."

Morrell laments that a side effect of modern technology is that it has moved the human component further away. "The goal of women's studies and Women's History Month is that we want equity, real equity," she says. "Women are still doing 18 hours a day. In my home we worked toward the understanding that I should come home after eight hours, and everyone should work until all of the chores were done. I really work to keep it fair."

At the end of the visit, we briefly touch on the changes in US politics, now that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is two heartbeats from the presidency and Sen. Hillary Clinton is a frontrunner for the 2008 Democratic nomination.

But both Jensen and Morrell are cautious about the idea of a woman being president, and are not ready to commit to a woman taking charge of US politics just yet. They agree that a minority male would probably be a better choice at this time, and perhaps that will pave the way for the next step, a woman as president of the United States.

Leslie Morrell, an avid moviegoer, mentions a scene in the recent release, The Queen, which is based on the incidents that took place between the British monarchy and Prime Minister Tony Blair just after the tragic death of Princess Diana:

"The Prime Minister says (to the queen), 'Let's walk.'

"And the queen says to him (in reference to the death of the princess), 'What do we need to do?'"

Morrell smiles and imagines a substitution for Blair in the scene, having to work with the queen: "Now, wouldn't that be neat if it were George Bush doing that?"

Senior writer Jeff Berg lives in Las Cruces.

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