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Women have had a harder, slower climb in universities than in Government. Rivlin points to the reason: "It's harder to discriminate in Government." In 1977 only 3.3% of all full professors of economics were women; in the leading universities, the figure was only 1%. Still, a growing number of female stars are today rising over the campuses. One of them, Marina Whitman, 43, economics professor at the University of Pittsburgh, broke new ground by becoming the first female member of the three-person CEA in the Nixon Administration. A specialist in global economics, Whitman says wryly of her CEA appointment: "There was a kind of debutante quality about it." One of the vexing problems that she encountered in Washington was that women and men very often were separated after dinner. Eventually, she stopped accepting dinner invitations.
Another campus standout, Phyllis Wallace, now in her 50s, has been burdened by prejudice against blacks as well as women. She spent decades in and out of undistinguished middle-level teaching and Government jobs before her talents were finally recognized and she was made a tenured professor at M.I.T.'s Sloan School of Management. Wallace believes that the main difficulty facing young women entering the field of economics is to break into the mentor-protégé system, which has historically excluded females. Says she: "Without a mentor, you have a lot of trouble getting money to do research on your own."
Ann Friedlaender, 40, professor of economics and civil engineering at M.I.T., made her mark with a widely influential study of the costs and benefits of the interstate highway system. As head of the women's caucus of the American Economic Association, Friedlaender has been a leader in the drive to get more women into graduate school.
Only a handful of women economists occupy top spots in business, but even there conditions are improving. One of the best-known business specialists is Kathleen Cooper, 33, who is an economist for the Denver-based United Banks of Colorado, an 18-bank holding company. Says she: "More and more women are coming into the profession and doing well, but there aren't a whole lot at the top. I'm a rarity." Another rarity is Kathryn Eickhoff, vice president and treasurer of Townsend-Greenspan, economic consultants to many of the nation's largest corporations. She assumed most of the duties of the firm's president, Alan Greenspan, when he went to Washington as chief of the CEA under President Ford.
For all the progress, old biases die hard. Says Carolyn Shaw Bell, a Wellesley College economics professor and a prime mover in the drive to place more women in important economic positions: "There is a clear indication of change at some levels, but the advancement of women has to be pushed if it is to continue."