Vol~ 13, Number 2 N~SLE~ER March-April 1983

PRESIDENT'S REPORT The Denver meeting. The AWM program at the annual meeting included a panel on computers, the Emmy Noether Lecture, a cocktail party, and a dinner, all in one very busy day. Despite the hectic schedule, all the events were very well attended. The panel on computers began with a talk by Nancy Johnson on "My microcomputer and I" in which she described uses for her Apple, which included the scheduling of summer school teaching. Louise Hay, speaking on "Administrative uses of computers," discussed the use of a mainframe computer in her department for activities ranging from writing memos to keeping personnel records. Next, Lucy Garnett talked about "My evolution from mathematician to the field of computers." Merci Perlstadt spoke on "Symbol manipulators in mathematical research," i.e., software for symbolic calculations. The last speaker was Lenore Blum whose talk, "Some influences of computer science on mathematical research", dealt with theoretical questions of the difficulty of a computation. The fourth annual Emmy Noether Lecture was delivered by Cathleen Morawetz. She was introduced by Jill Mesirov. Her talk, entitled "How do perturbations of the wave equation behave?", came with an unexpected ending: a movie showing the phenomena she had discussed. At the dinner held that evening to honor the speaker we were very pleased that Olga Taussky Todd, a previous Emmy Noether Lecturer, was able to Join us: The AWM cocktail party drew a record crowd. Besides the many AWM members and :. friends, we also had a surprise guest: Edward A. Knapp, the new director of the NSF.. At the meeting of the Executive Committee a change in the by-laws was proposed: This change would require resolutions for the Business meeting to be discussed first by the Executive Committee. A committee consisting of Bhama Srinivasan, Jeanne LaDuke and Bettye Anne Case was appointed to study this possible change and make a recommendation. Another issue discussed was the proposal that AWM provide a room- mate matching service for women who want to attend the sumner or annual meetings. Thls plan has a lot of support from AWM members, and it will be tried experimentally first at the Albany meeting in August. Rebekka Struik will be responsible for working out the details..Ed, note: see article below. The Business Meeting passed a resolution introduced by Christine Ayoub, in which AWM expresses its support for the National Academy of Sciences' call for steps toward a nuclear freeze. The resolution appeared in the Oct.-Nov. Newsletter.

Another honor for Julia Robinson. She has just been awarded a MecArthur Fellowship, in a program designed to support "geniuses." Congratulations from AWM. Ltnda Rothschild Department of Mathematics University of Wisconsin Madison, WI 53706 -2- LETTER FROM THE EDITOR Professor Lee Lorch, , , , is in the news again. The student newspaper the Excalibur of November 18, 1982 contains an article entitled "Mathematics Professor Lorch's work status to be decided by arbitration" by John P. Schmied. The dispute centers around whether Lorch should continue teaching on a full- time reduced-load basis or on a retired part-time basis. Schmied reports "An ad hoc committee in support of Professor Lorch has expressed its concern that he is possibly being offered a part-time position in order to keep him out of the union and fully backs the grievance committee report which recommended that a full-time, reduced load position be offered to the professor." The issue is going to artitration after a grievance committee recommendation in the professor's favour was rejected by the Administration as unsatisfactory. Professor Lorch has a long history of social activism and has been very active in the York faculty union. He is also a long-time AWM member and supporter.

The publication Illinois Issues has published five original essays by distinguished humanists, sponsored in part by a grant from the Illinois Humanities Council, in cooper- ation with the National Endowment for the Humanities. Reprints of the essays are avail- able at no cost from the Illinois Humanities Council, 210 W. Springfield, Champaign, IL 61820. The first of these, "The Women's Movement: Place and Power", appeared in the May 1982 issue of Illinois Issues, pp. 19-26. The author is Bari Watkins, Director of the Program on Women at Northwestern University. The article did not provide me with any earth-shaking new insights, but it is extremely well-written and could prove useful in the education of recalcitrants. The passages below ~re my favorites. "This is a true story. During the Christmas holidays Betty Friedan and a local woman journal ist appeared on a Boston TV talk show, Friedan, as is now usual, argued frantically that fe,~inists have denigrated the family by encouraging women to desert the joys of home and motherhood for selfish careers. The local journalist managed to observe that feminists have in fact worked hard for a decade to foster better child care and family health and to help women shoulder the double burden of paid work and household labor. When the male moderator finally called on the all-female studio audience for comments, a young woman rose to her feet and angrily attacked Friedan. Her eyes filled with tears and her voice shook with fury as she said that the women's movement'couldn't make' her go to work even if the ERA passed, 'that she loved her children and that Friedan was trying to destroy the family. The audience cheered and the moderator patted her shoulder approvingly. Friedan looked baffled; the local journalist was behTu~ed. "Feminist social scientists have recently pointed out some of the more fascinating aspects of this struggle in everyday life. Women, they find, end spoken sentences on a rising (and questioning) tone far more frequently than men, and also complete statements with what are called tag questions, as in "It's a beautiful day, isn't it?" Women sit and stand in ways (hands in lap, knees together) that take up less space than conven- tional male postures and avert their eyes from strangers much more often than men. Women smile far more than men, are touched by men more often than they touch, and are inter- rupted in conversations twice as much as men. Even the great door-opening co,ltroversy has been examined: It turns out that high-status persons (physicians, professors) control door-opening for the low-status (patients, students) as a way of maintaining power over space and access. Men open doors for women. "Taken one by one, these issues may appear individually irrelevant; they are only the stage business of life. But taken together, they add up to a texture of interactions in which women's subordinate status and need to please the dominant group are endlessly repeated and reinforced. The level of discomfort, irritation and anger that erupts when the rules are violated testifies to their significance in a social order that depends on unspoken but powerful rules to maintain male dominance and female dependence. A woman faculty member reports she deliberately did not smile excessively at a department meeting; her male colleagues reacted to her proposals and suggestions with uncharac- teristic hostility." 0

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WOMEN MATHEMATICIANS IN CANADA

AWM panel at meeting, August 25, 1982 third installment

Reine Fournier

"Women Mathematicians in the Province of Quebec"

Women mathematicians in Quebec have the same kinds of problems as those encountered by women mathematicians elsewhere in Canada. However, they have at least one more, that is, if they want to work in French they do not have as many universities or colleges to apply to; and as far as colleges are concerned, in the province of Quebec, it is very hard for a Ph.D. holder (woman or man) to get a position in one of them except possibly in Montreal and the immediate vicinity. One problem t