Golden Fleece Award, Gender, 1970S Table of Contents
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FLEECING THE SCIENCE OF LOVE: WILLIAM PROXMIRE, ELAINE HATFIELD, AND THE POLITICS OF GENDER IN THE 1970S A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAIʻI AT MᾹNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN HISTORY DECEMBER 2012 By Richard J. Martin Dissertation Committee: Richard L. Rapson, Chairperson Margot Henriksen Robert McGlone Vina Lanzona Janet Latner Keywords: William Proxmire, Elaine Hatfield, Golden Fleece Award, gender, 1970s Table of Contents Abstract................................................................................................................................ ii Introduction.......................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1 Love and Politics in the 1970s: A Gendered History of the “Me Decade”.................................................................................................21 Chapter 2 William Proxmire: Rage Against the “Federal Love Machine”...................82 Chapter 3 “A Scientist’s Love Story”: Elaine Hatfield and Relationship Science.........................................................................................................152 Chapter 4 Negotiating Gender: Men and Women’s Issues in The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times...............................................................215 Chapter 5 Conflicting Views of Men and Women: The Chicago Tribune Versus The Capital Times............................................................................266 Conclusion...............................................................................................................318 Bibliography............................................................................................................338 i Abstract In March 1975, Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire awarded his first Golden Fleece Award to Elaine Hatfield and Ellen Berscheid because the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded them $84,000 to study love research. Carried on monthly for fifteen straight years, the Golden Fleece Award became synonymous with government waste, amusing scientific research, and outlandish public works projects. The Golden Fleece Award impacted how the NSF reviewed projects, allocated funding, and publicized research. Chapter one provides a historiographical review of the 1970s and focuses on social tensions, especially those between men and women. Largely the product of activism by the women’s movement, issues previously limited to the personal sphere such as reproductive agency, domestic violence, and a lack of educational and employment opportunities for women became part of the mainstream political discussion. Biographical accounts of William Proxmire and Elaine Hatfield from primary sources comprise chapters two and three. The final two chapters look at four daily newspapers, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Capital Times (Madison, WI), and the Chicago Tribune, in order to provide a more nuanced understanding of the daily news coverage of the mid-1970s. These close readings address how issues about relationships between men and women were a constant feature and informed the public debate surrounding the first Golden Fleece Award. The overarching argument of this work is that the dramatic economic, political, and social changes of the 1970s were regularly interpreted through the lens of men and ii women’s relationships. Disputes between men and women--personal and professional-- were a constant theme of newspaper coverage in the mid-1970s. There was a palpable tension between men and women’s public, private, and political relationships that informed how news was selected and presented to the public. This dynamic informed the cultural debate over the first Golden Fleece Award. The conclusion addresses the long-term impact of the Golden Fleece Award on the careers of Elaine Hatfield and William Proxmire and discusses public funding of scientific research. iii Introduction The Personal and Professional Are Political My choice for the biggest waste of taxpayer money for the month of March was the National Science Foundation’s squandering of $84,000 trying to identify why people fall in love. I object to this not only because no one—not even the National Science Foundation—can argue that falling in love is a science; not only because I’m sure that whether NSF spends $84 million or $84 billion, they won’t get an answer that anyone would believe, but I’m against it also because because I don’t want the answer. I believe that 200 million other Americans want to leave some elements of life a mystery, and right at the top of the things that we don’t want to know is why a man falls in love with a woman and vice versa. So National Science Foundation—get out of the love racket. Leave such a task to Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Irving Berlin. If there is anywhere Alexander Pope was right, it was when he observed, ’If ignorance is bliss, tis folly to be wise.’ --Press release March 11, 1975 from Senator William Proxmire (D) Wisconsin In March 1975, Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire issued the press release quoted above that criticized the federal government for spending $84,000 on “love” research. A liberal Democrat with a graduate degree in accounting, Proxmire was a long- time critic of wasteful government spending. Throughout his career in the United States Senate, he had published many works on the subject of government spending, including Report from Wasteland: America’s Military-Industrial Complex (1970), Uncle Sam--The Last of the Bigtime Spenders (1972), and Can Congress Control Spending? (1973). By the mid-1970s, he was widely considered an expert on economic issues and was regularly quoted in the media for guidance on a variety of economic issues. In January 1975, Proxmire inherited the chairmanship of the powerful Banking Committee. Proxmire’s satirical attack on the National Science Foundation for squandering “$84,000 trying to find out why people fall in love” was immediately controversial.1 The 1 “Senator William Proxmire Archives,” State Historical Society, Madison, Wisconsin. Box 117. Folder 23. 1 grant recipients—Professors Elaine Hatfield and Ellen Berscheid—defended their research in newspaper interviews. Nationally syndicated writer James Reston addressed the topic directly in his column, and a wide variety of newspapers published letters to the editor from constituents and scientists weighing in on both sides of the issue. Proxmire, an avid debater, penned a lengthy response to Reston, justifying his first Golden Fleece Award by quoting directly from the scientists’ original grant proposal. With a federal budget in the hundreds of billions, $84,000 was a relatively minimal expense, and on its own would not have warranted national debate. American attitudes towards sex, marriage, and all intimate relationships were central to cultural debates of the mid-1970s and thus Proxmire’s first Golden Fleece Award proved controversial because it touched upon these debates. The research conducted by two female psychologists and the defamation of their work by a United States senator reaffirmed that debates between men and women were of central importance to the nation in the mid-1970s. The controversy expressed several interrelated tensions within American culture. These included fears surrounding the changing roles of women and the apparent disintegration of the two parent family unit, a lack of public trust of the government in a post-Watergate/Vietnam era, and a national recession. Countless other issues either directly or indirectly involved men and women’s disputes, from abortion and child welfare to environmental protection and national security. This dissertation will show how the contested terrain of men and women’s roles, rights, and responsibilities formed the subtext for many other debates. 2 As women gained new employment opportunities as well as educational and biological rights, the structure of the family, the workforce, and the economy were simultaneously transforming. A restructuring of the family unit took place in tandem: the divorce rate doubled between 1966 and 1976, and the number of working mothers with small children skyrocketed. The percentage of employed women with children younger than six years of age increased from thirty percent in 1970 to forty-three percent in 1976. This trend continued so that half of all women with young children were working by 1985.2 Federally funded experiments on how or why people fell in love aligned with the ongoing controversy involving family, fiscal responsibility, and government accountability. In the mid-1970s, there were visible tensions between men and women chiefly regarding the latter's rights, responsibilities, and opportunities in America. The nation’s newspapers featured articles debating the legal, economic, educational, athletic, and biological rights of women on a daily basis. High profile events, such as the nationally televised “The Battle of the Sexes” tennis match in 1973 between the current women’s champion Billie Jean King and a former men’s champion, Bobby Riggs, expressed Americans’ obsession with the conflicts between men and women. During a time of economic contraction, a challenging job market, and limited public funds, Americans debated how to provide women equal access to resources and how to protect them under the law. Private relationships between men and women were also hotly contested. The 2 Beth Bailey and David