Historians of economics should write a script for Hollywood on the life and work of economist Phyllis Wallace.
This was suggested to me by Ashenfelter in an intrw last June and I think he is definitely right on this point.
Here is a thread commissiond by @Undercoverhist
1/19
This was suggested to me by Ashenfelter in an intrw last June and I think he is definitely right on this point.
Here is a thread commissiond by @Undercoverhist
1/19
An economist, a civil servant and a “quiet revolutionary”, Wallace is the most important economist in the history of the economics of discrimination in term of policy impact, among *many many many* other things she did. (quote here by labor econ Lisa Lynch) 2/
Main (scarce) sources are @drjlastword’s paper in the 1994 ASSA session in honor of Wallace jstor.org/stable/2117808…
and IWER MIT Tribute iwer.mit.edu/about/iwer-pio…
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and IWER MIT Tribute iwer.mit.edu/about/iwer-pio…
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Wallace was born in Baltimore c. 1924. She majored in economics at NYU magna cum laude and ΦΒΚ in 1944, wanted to be a teacher but met a prof who encouraged her to apply to Yale where she obtained an MA (1944) and PhD (1948) in Economics, facing barriers all the way 4/
After completing her PhD in international economics, she joined the NBER, while also teaching economics & statistics part time at City College NYC. She later joined the faculty of Atlanta University who offer her a tenure-tarck position. 5/
She then became a senior economist for the US government specializing on Soviet economic studies but it is not clear when. That’s the Hollywood part we don’t know a lot about. She works for the CIA as an “economist in intelligence”. 6/
In 1965, she became chief of technical studies at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s Office of Research, until 1969. Stryker showed how a panel of experts, put together by Wallace, made a tremendous impact --> bit.ly/2RY5JJp 7/
She pioneered the use of occupational employment data as a tool for enforcement of Title VII, and providing data for researchers working on discrimination. 8/
She is most known however for her role in the later AT&T case, then the largest private employer in the United States. A former student, Annette LaMond recalled 9/
Her account of the AT&T case was published in a book (the one she is holding in the 1st picture). Settled in 1973, the company paid millions in backpay, made changes in transfer and promotion policies and recruitment criteria. 10/ openlibrary.org/books/OL520763…
On how this case and other EEOC cases against big companies radically changed the American workplace, see Dobbin's press.princeton.edu/books/paperbac… and Turk's histories upenn.edu/pennpress/book… 11/
In addition to her work in government, she was also active in putting new ideas on the academic agenda. Wallace and La Mond organized a big conference on Women, Minorities, and Employment Discriminationat MIT in 1974, later published in 1977
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After EEOC, Wallace joined Kenneth Clark as Vice President of the Metropolitan Applied Research Center in NYC from 1969 to 1972, conducting studies on the employment problems of urban minority youth and wrote this pathbreaking book *Pathways to Work* 13/
Joining the MIT Sloan School of Management faculty as a visiting professor in 1973, she became full professor in 1975: the first woman & the first African-American to gain tenure at Sloan. While there, she was involved in numerous activities as a teacher and as a mentor. 14/
Meanwhile, she has always been involved in professional org, within the AEA (even if she could not attend the first meetings) within the CSWEP, but also at the NAE, and as the first African-American and first woman President of the Industrial Relations Research Association. 15/
After her retirement in 1986, she agreed to spend 6 months helping then Sloan School Dean Thurow improve the School’s response to sexual harassment problems. The school later endowed the Phyllis A. Wallace Doctoral Fellows Fund & the Phyllis A. Wallace Visiting Scholars Fund 16/
She was part of numerous companies Boards in the Boston area, and as a member of the Museum of Fine Arts Board of Trustees, she helps establishing the Nubian Gallery there and later chaired the museum committee working on opening the museum to "new audiences". 17/
As Thurow articulates in his tribute “having made it over the obstacles in her course, she turned to removing the obstacles for others”.
Wallace died in 1993.
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Wallace died in 1993.
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Read Malveaux essay! --> jstor.org/stable/2117809…
There are actually very few sources, no oral history, no archives, very few traces. The work and life of people like Phyllis Wallace should be the histories we wrote and care about.
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There are actually very few sources, no oral history, no archives, very few traces. The work and life of people like Phyllis Wallace should be the histories we wrote and care about.
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See some other questions left opened here:
and here
and here
Also this article
