The most common excuse male researchers offer for women’s lack of upward mobility is that they’re too distracted by raising a family, so I asked how Crewe managed this aspect. “I married someone I met during college, and we have two boys, ages 27 and 23. I have a drawing taped to the side of my office bookshelf that no one else can see. It was made by my now 23-year-old son when he was about 6. I had handed him a black magic marker and a stack of paper to amuse himself while I was in the office on the weekend trying to get some work done. The drawing is of two figures—me and him, and at the top, in a rectangular box, are the words ‘Cope wit Daniel.’ Clearly there were times I couldn’t be with my family because of my job, but I think it was good for my children to see my progression through my career. I was lucky that during the time my children were young my office was only a few blocks from home. Women who have long commutes have more trouble. I take the subway to work. Work/life balance remains difficult for women because they still do the lion’s share of the housekeeping and child rearing.” For anybody speculating what happened to Daniel since he drew his masterpiece: “He has graduated from Sarah Lawrence and is planning to go to graduate school for classical guitar and music composition.” Meanwhile, one of the specializations Crewe lists on her CUP profile is food studies. When asked if she thinks cooking or food science is stereotypically women’s work, she replied: “The food list I developed here has nothing to do with my gender—my husband is the cook in our family. In 1999, I published a translation of an annales school European social history of food, and discovered there was a strong, interdisciplinary audience for serious books on food history and science, so I developed a list.”
Crewe has contributed to women’s rights in publishing via her service. The top article that comes up on Google for female university professors is about Crewe from Sal Robinson She mentions AAUP’s WISP group (Women in Scholarly Publishing), saying that it has “faded” since its heyday. The article does not specify if Crewe was active in WISP, so I asked for clarification: “I did participate in WISP—it was a good early effort at supporting women in the business and developing a community. In the years that have passed since that group was started women are represented in far greater numbers in university press publishing.” This is indicative of the way that women who join organizations like WISP climb higher than women who assume that women already have all the rights they need.
Both Crewe and Henry are involved in other feminist activities. As Henry commented: “Chicago has a wonderful organization, Chicago Women in Publishing, that is our local version of WISP. I would like to explore the causes of the fading of WISP, and also think about how to approach professional development and networking in other ways.”
Drawing by Daniel Conant