According to her New York Times obituary, Mariam Kenosian Chamberlain (April 24, 1918—April 1, 2013) became known as “the fairy godmother of women’s studies” during her time as program director at the Ford Foundation (1971-1981). But before beginning her highly successful career in research project sponsorship, she had taught at Connecticut College, the School of General Studies at Columbia University, and at Hunter College, having studied undergraduate and graduate economics at Radcliffe-Harvard. She was awarded in 1950 a Ph.D. for her thesis, “Investment Policy in Large Corporations”.

After listing her scholarship awards at Radcliffe along with the dates of her academic degrees, I include two items that provide the testimony of a few of those who knew her professionally and personally. We learn (among many genuinely important things) that towards the end of her long life, she was a regular reader of Paul Krugman’s New York Times columns and “for whatever reason[,] she wanted to see, meet, engage, or possibly hang out with men”. She was clearly an inspirational figure for many and that “she loved being an economist”.

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From the Radcliffe College Annual Presidential Reports

Freshman Year

Marian [sic] Kenosian (class of 1939). Recipient of an “Emergency Award” from the Permanent Charity Scholarship Fund.

Source: Radcliffe College, President’s Report for 1935-36, p. 37.

Sophomore Year

Marion [sic] Kenosian (class of 1939). Recipient of a Lois M. Parmenter Undergraduate Scholarship.

Source: Radcliffe College, President’s Report for 1936-37, p. 32.

Junior Year

Mariam Kenosian (class of 1939). Recipient of a partial Abby Y. Lawson Memorial undergraduate scholarship.

Source: Radcliffe College, President’s Report for 1937-38, p. 31.

Mariam Kenosian (class of 1939). Recipient of a partial Permanent Charity Fund undergraduate scholarship.

Source: Radcliffe College, President’s Report for 1937-38, p. 33.

Senior Year

Mariam Kenosian (class of 1939). Recipient of an Ellen M. Barr undergraduate scholarship.

Source: Radcliffe College, President’s Report for 1938-39, p. 30.

Mariam Kenosian Bachelor of Arts (June 1939) cum laude (Honors) in economics.

Source: Radcliffe College, President’s Report for 1938-39, p. 35.

Graduate School

Mariam Kenosian Chamberlain, Master of Arts (March 1948).

Source: Radcliffe College, President’s Report for 1947-48, p. 21.

Mariam Kenosian Chamberlain, Ph.D.  (June 1950).

Subject, Economics. Special Field, Business Organization and Control. Dissertation, “Investment Policies of Large Corporations”.

Source: Radcliffe College, President’s Report for 1949-50, p. 20.

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In Memoriam: Mariam K. Chamberlain, 1918–2013
Posted on April 3, 2013

Dr. Mariam K. Chamberlain, a founding member of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research and the founding president of the National Council for Research on Women, was the driving force behind the cultivation and sustainability of the women’s studies field of academic research. She is the namesake of IWPR’s prestigious Mariam K. Chamberlain Fellowship for Women in Public Policy, which trains young women for successful careers in research. Throughout her life, Dr. Chamberlain fought discrimination, established new roles for women, and championed the economic analysis of women’s issues. She passed away on April 2, 2013, at 94, just a few weeks shy of her 95th birthday, following complications from heart surgery.

A Lifetime of Lifting Up Women’s Voices in Academia and Research

The daughter of Armenian immigrants, Mariam Kenosian Chamberlain was born and raised in Chelsea, Massachusetts, a working class suburb of Boston. Interest in the prevailing conditions of the depression led her to economics. She attended Radcliffe College on a scholarship and worked as a research assistant in the summers for Wassily Leontief, who later won the Nobel Prize in economics. During World War II, she worked at the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), on the staff of a “brain trust” of economists and other social scientists assembled by General William (“Wild Bill”) Donovan to aid in the war effort. As part of the research and analysis branch, she worked on estimates of enemy, military, and industrial strength.

In 1950, Mariam Chamberlain received her Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University, making her one of the few women of her generation to earn a Ph.D. in the field. In 1956, Dr. Chamberlain joined the Ford Foundation, where she served as a program officer in Economic Development and Administration, and then Education and Public Policy, until 1981. While at Ford, she spearheaded the funding of the academic women’s research and women’s studies movement; she is said to have provided nearly $10 million in support of new feminist initiatives. Her projects fostered a new analysis of women’s position in society, expanded women’s choices in the university, and supported the development of equality in law. She played a major role in building the academic infrastructure necessary to better understand women’s experiences and inform improved policies for women. In short, she paved the way for organizations like IWPR to thrive, and stocked the research pipeline with skilled women and men who have made important contributions to the study of women and public policy.

Economics and the elimination of discrimination against women around the world remained the heart of her wide-ranging activities. After leaving the Ford Foundation in 1982, she headed the Task Force on Women in Higher Education at the Russell Sage Foundation. The Task Force’s work culminated in a published volume, Women in Academe: Progress and Prospects. Before leaving Ford, she had funded an initial meeting of a group of women’s research centers. That meeting established the National Council for Research on Women, which unanimously elected her its first president. She served in that role until 1989, after which she continued to go into the office every day as Founding President and Resident Scholar.

A Legacy of Training the Next Generation of Women Policy Researchers

IWPR owes much to Dr. Chamberlain. In 1987, Dr. Heidi Hartmann founded IWPR out of a need for comprehensive, women-focused, policy-oriented research. Dr. Chamberlain, who dedicated her career to lifting up women’s voices in academia, recognized the importance of a policy research institute centered on women, grounded by social science methodology, economics, and rigorous data analysis. Applying academic research to inform better policies for women was a natural extension of Dr. Chamberlain’s work, and she became a founding member of IWPR and served on its Board of Directors for nearly 20 years.

IWPR endowed the Mariam K. Chamberlain Fellowship in Women and Public Policy to recognize the legacy of Dr. Chamberlain’s tireless efforts to open doors for the women researchers who came after her. Nearly 20 young women have gained valuable research experience as Fellows at IWPR since the beginning of the Mariam K. Chamberlain Fellowship. Past Mariam K. Chamberlain scholars have gone on to hold positions at government agencies such as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Congressional Research Service, earn advanced degrees from universities such as Harvard University, Columbia University, Stanford University, The George Washington University, and Brown University. Rhiana Gunn-Wright, IWPR’s current Mariam K. Chamberlain Fellow, was just recently named a 2013 Rhodes Scholar. The fellowship has allowed IWPR to expand its research capacity, strengthen its commitment to cultivating the next generation of women researchers and leaders, and ensure that a pipeline of experienced women researchers are at the policy-making table.

The fellowship helps sustain Dr. Chamberlain’s legacy, built on the belief that relying on credible data and research, rather than anecdote and bias, leads to better policies for working women, which in turn contribute to improved long-term outcomes for their families. May she not only rest in peace, but rest assured that, because of her efforts, there are many more women able to take up the torch she leaves behind.

Source:  Institute for Women’s Policy Research.  Blog post captured by the internet archive, Wayback Machine, on May 13, 2013.

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Excerpts and selections from speeches at Mariam Chamberlain’s Memorial

From Florence Howe, founder of Feminist Press, blog post (July 15, 2013).

From the Eulogy by David Kenosian (nephew)

I got my first impressions of Mariam through my father, her younger brother Harry, who told me about her life as the daughter of Armenian immigrants in Chelsea, Massachusetts, as a student at Radcliffe, and as a pioneering career woman. He admired his sister because, I think, she epitomized what he saw as key Armenian values, education and hard work. She herself affirmed those values; she insisted that her older brother Tony was the scholar in the family who set the standards of achievement. But following Tony’s example meant overcoming poverty and possibly the reservations of her parents who, like many Armenian parents back then, assumed that their daughter would marry and have a family. In continuing her education Mariam took the best of Armenian culture to break free from its constraints, and later did the same on a larger scale. At Harvard she like other women had to use a different entrance to some buildings than men. She later committed herself professionally to opening doors for women across the country in decades of tireless work.

Mariam’s talents impressed her professor, Edward Mason, who helped build an economic research branch in the OSS. Last December, Mariam told my nephew Tom and me that Edward Mason took her and other assistants to a summit meeting in Canada to support the American delegation: without eight years of entering Radcliffe, Mariam had gone to a conference where Churchill and Roosevelt met. With characteristic modesty she added that she never saw Churchill or Roosevelt. As a woman, she had a better working relationship with her British counterparts than with the men in the American delegation. You can see the hallmarks of her later career; her determination to overcome barriers, her service in the cause of justice, and the collaborative and at times international spirit of her work…

Professor Lois Gray, “On Mariam Chamberlain”

I first met Mariam Chamberlain in 1959—fifty-four years ago—not in New York City where we both lived but in Jamaica, West Indies, where her husband, Neil Chamberlain, and I were invited as speakers at an International Conference on Labor. Neil, a leading scholar and writer in the field of industrial relations, was my professor at Columbia University where I was studying for my Ph.D. Both of us brought out spouses to the conference. Neil bonded with my husband who was a labor leader, and Mariam and I discovered our common interest in opportunities for working women. A long lasting friendship grew out of this chance encounter in the Caribbean. [Note: Mariam and Neil were married in 1942 and divorced in 1967?/1970?]

Over the years I came to know about and admire Mariam’s path-breaking role at the Ford Foundation where she was responsible for funding women’s studies programs in universities throughout the United States and other countries. At our occasional lunches she casually referred to experiences in Nairobi, Pakistan, Europe, and South America. I also witnessed her emergence as a leader in the American Economics Association, where she was able to bring feminist issues to the fore in a profession dominated by men. In the year 2000 we were both involved in a comparative analysis of women’s progress toward leadership recognition in various professions, ranging from military to corporate. I wrote the section on Women in Labor Unions, and Mariam, on Academic, for a book published by the American Woman. We had fun comparing notes on our findings. (Women do better in achieving leadership roles in academe than in corporations or unions.) Throughout my more than fifty years of knowing Mariam Chamberlain, I never ceased to be amazed—awed—by her any accomplishments in creating lasting institutions and programs for the advancement of women. Always unassuming and laid back, Mariam was a powerhouse who changed our world. Her life of selfless dedication is a role model for us all.

From Dr. Debra L. Schultz, “Remarks”

…Because of Mariam, I learned that as a woman, one simply obtained a PhD. I had no role models for this and she demystified it for me. If getting a doctorate in economics at Harvard as the girl child of Armenian immigrants during World War II was no big deal, what did I have to complain about?

Mariam loved being an economist. During our last visit in March, she reminisced about her time as a Radcliffe undergraduate, when her mentor, future Nobel Prize-winning economist Wassily Leontief, would read the students chapter drafts sent over by John Maynard Keynes! For a moment, I felt her transform into that excited young woman intellectual and it was thrilling.

Averse to the touchy-feeling side of feminism, she nevertheless drew circles of adoring young women around her, by keeping track of our every personal and professional move. I’m proud to have followed in her footsteps to become a feminist in philanthropy—I never knew such a thing existed before Mariam and the Ford stories—and to work with women internationally, which Mariam did decades before it was trendy.

Mariam never seemed to inhabit a particular age, and she also had a slightly naughty twinkle in her eye. Very little got past that eye, even if she pretended not to notice slights or injustices that came her way. Her satisfaction came from supporting, connecting, and catalyzing. When I had the great opportunity to help start the first international women’s program at the Soros Foundation, Mariam told me ruefully that as a program officer, “you give away your best ideas and let others implement them.” She modeled a generous way of empowering others, not aggrandizing herself…

Marjorie Lightman, “Remarks”

…Since girlhood Mariam had probably regarded the people and opinions voiced around her with an alienated eye. She certainly set expectations for herself in line with an internal compass. After all, at 18, while her brother chose Boston College she chose Radcliffe.

Mariam often told me that she was fortunate to have always worked in organizations that were young and making their mark on the world. Who would not thrill at Harvard classes reading John Galbraith’s newest works in manuscript; or working at the OSS in Washington during the World War II, when Gen. Wild Bill Donovan brought together “best and the brightest” to outwit the enemy?

Her commitment to elite institutions on the rise never wavered. When she lived in New Haven with her husband, Neil Chamberlain, who was an economist at Yale, she became part of the Yale Growth Center – an economic think tank founded in 1961. After her divorce, she joined the Ford Foundation, which under McGeorge Bundy had the heady atmosphere of new possibilities and the kind of intellectual energy that made risk into an adventure.

Working under Marshall Robinson she became part of Ford’s audacious $40 million investment in reconceiving business education. The plan to effect change in undergraduate business education and to institute an academically acceptable Masters in Business administration privileged large and mostly elite institutions with funding that sometimes dwarfed mere mortals. Rarely have a foundation’s plans been so successful.

By the time women’s clamor for change had reached the ears of Ford in the early 1970s, Mariam had become a skilled program officer and absorbed lessons of success from the business education program. With a pot of money that was approximately ¼ that spent on business education, she sought out nascent organizations that could become long-lasting institutions and anchor women-centered research and education into the future.

She spread her funds among research centers, academic programs, and scrappy grass-roots organization and coalitions. Not surprisingly they included Stanford, Michigan, Wellesley, and two centers at Radcliffe – Schlesinger and the Bunting. However, risk was the nexus of her intellectual landscape. She was, after all, an economist who thought in algebraic equations. The unknown “x” factor was central to her calculations. And it was in this space – between the provable, the probable and the possible – that she made her most original decisions. She believed that the Feminist Press, IWPR, and the National Council for Research on Women would be the institutions of the future.

It was also in this space that our friendship thrived. We had very different kinds of minds and education. We often disagreed. Her conviction that economics was the queen of disciplines was never shaken. She would ask why I spent my time on history, let alone ancient history. Just recite the facts, she would say. I would respond that the facts had different interpretations. She would parry: not if you presented them properly. I liked life lived on the margins. She was unwavering in her conviction that change came through institutions. She wanted data; I insight. We were intellectual sparring partners who never were bored by our exchanges and who never were threatened by our differences…

From “Eulogy” by Mary Rubin

…In 1982, Mariam asked me to join her at the Russell Sage Foundation on a book project to examine progress and prospects for women in higher education, a companion assessment to an earlier book by Alice Rossi. Immediately she welcomed me into Russell Sage’s heady atmosphere of notable social scientists, and often invited me to tag along at elegant meals and meetings she hosted for prominent feminists. Today, whenever I invite a guest for lunch at the Harvard Club, I relish following the tradition she established.

Becoming a Resident Scholar at Russell Sage represented a crucial transition in Mariam’s life. She could have chosen to envelope herself in nostalgia for what Ford had enabled her to achieve. But that was never Mariam’s way. Instead, she stayed vigilant for opportunities. She maintained her accessibility to a steady stream of feminist scholars and practitioners who arrived seeking her advice and contacts in the foundation world. In these meetings, I learned to pay as much attention to what she didn’t say as to what she actually said.

Not only did she help me to find my voice in discourse with thinkers who’d completed their doctorates before I was born, she introduced me to Zabar’s coffee beans, elegant Italian leather boots by Galo, and the pleasures of eating only hot fudge sundaes for dinner. I had barely started working for her when she agreed to guarantee the lease on my first-ever apartment—a railroad flat on the Upper East Side with a claw foot bathtub in the kitchen. In characteristic fashion, she shared my delight, while simultaneously withholding her opinion of its truly miniscule size.

No matter how early I arrived at work, or how late I stayed, she was always ensconced in her office; however, she never pressured me to adopt the same schedule. She set high expectations, but rarely criticized. Hers was a quiet form of guiding and shaping. She taught me to listen intently, to ask probing questions, to be steadfast in advocating my perspective. Her goal always was to win others over, never to squash them. When a discussion moved in an unproductive direction, I watched how she lightened the atmosphere by describing a favorite New Yorker cartoon—and then resumed her line of argument. I’m guessing she used this technique frequently while at Ford…

 

Dorothy O. Helly, “Remarks”

I came into Mariam’s orbit in the late 1970s through Marjorie Lightman and the Institute for Research in History. We connected in the following years over a number of shared interests, one in particular being curriculum transformation, first at Hunter College and later among the faculty throughout the City University. She often urged me to “write it up,” for to Mariam, if it was worth doing, it was worth telling others about it. We traveled in the same groups that went to Nairobi and Beijing, and through these years of international women’s studies concerns, I became a “station” on the way for women from abroad seeking information about grants, coming to me at Hunter and being sent by me to Mariam, wherever she was located, from Russell Sage to Roosevelt House to the latest offices of the National Council for Research on Women.

Mariam, Florence, and Helene became a troika in my life as well, and they always surprised me with their delightful hostess gifts at the annual New Year’s party my husband and I gave to celebrate the Millennium and the decade that followed.

Mariam and I met up over the years at the conferences of National Women’s Studies Association and the Berkshire Conference on Women’s History, often having at least one dinner together to discuss whatever was the latest news or just to schmooze. Many times these dinners included at least one other woman, and I listened to their projects being presented to her for help and approval. I remember in particular the dinner with Heidi Hartmann when her policy organization was barely more than a gleam in her eyes.

I also remember being in the same university dormitory in Nairobi and chatting in the hallway before going to bed. We were in the same Swiss-run hotel in Beijing, seeing each other at breakfast and dinner. In other words, Mariam and Women’s Studies were intertwined in my life, a person with whom one could talk about the latest issues, particularly transforming the curriculum and the problems facing the new Ph.D. programs in Women’s Studies. I know that Mariam was an important sounding board for many people. It was a way for them and her to keep up with the latest activities in the field . It also provided a way to tap her suggestions, based on her wide, wide knowledge of who was doing what and, of course, where it might be possible to get project funding.

Mariam’s generosity was open and casually extended. When she had to cancel her trip to Australia for a meeting of the International Congress on Women, she offered me her prepaid room. I accepted, and then, in the same spirit, shared it with another woman who did not have a place to stay. Mariam, of course, wanted a full report when I returned.

We sat together, often literally, on the board of the Feminist Press, and across the table at Parnell’s with people like Marjorie and Blanche Cook. On the trip from Beijing, via Helsinki, we both accepted a $200 bribe from the airline to bump us off our flight to take another one three-hours later. That allowed us time to wander the Helsinki airport, window shopping, and my personal coup was to convince Mariam, who never seemed to buy herself any personal luxury, to purchase a large amber and silver ring. She wore that ring on occasions like Feminist Press and NCRW galas, and she was wearing it the last time I saw her this year. Like so many others, my life was touched by hers, and I have many happy memories by which to remember her.

From Lybra Clemons “Eulogy for Mariam”

…After graduate school and years of working at nonprofits, I began working at the National Council for Research on Women (the Council) in 2003. My office was next door to Mariam’s….

Towards the end, it was quite interesting to see Mariam. She had good days and not so great days. I have to say that her unpredictability was somewhat entertaining. I wonder if she was doing this for us….just to keep us on our toes and to get a giggle every now and then.

Honestly – I would walk in the door of Parnells (her favorite restaurant), and wonder what decade Mariam thought she was in today. Sometimes it was 1972….. and all of her stories would center around that decade. Then it was 1935…… But – we indulged her.

Again –there were days when Mariam was so sharp, that I felt downright stupid and couldn’t keep up. If you had not read and/or analyzed Paul Krugman, she was not amused.

One of our last outings together at Parnells was particularly interesting. Mariam, Gwen, Joan and I dined with Mariam and observed her becoming more concerned with the “lack of men”. She kept saying “where are the men?”… and pointing to people at Parnell’s. She would see a man and say “there’s a man”. Clearly she wanted to make sure we included men…. Well, I think that was the point. I love Mariam dearly, but for whatever reason she wanted to see, meet, engage, or possibly hang out with men – I knew that Parnell’s was likely the last place that we should look for sourcing these types of men. But – the point was well taken….

From “Remarks” by Helene Goldfarb

Good evening. My name is Helene Goldfarb and I am the President of the Feminist Press at CUNY. I am here to speak of Mariam as a friend for many years but also as a very important part of who the Feminist Press was and what it has become over the years because of her nurturing and caring. Mariam, who was a Program Officer at the Ford Foundation, was one of the first to make a grant to the Feminist Press. It was for $12,000 for Who’s Who and Where in Women Studies. Interestingly, she wouldn’t let us use computers because she “didn’t want to become involved with us” but she changed her mind and introduced us to Terry Saario also at Ford who gave us our first large grant for the “Women and Work” high school series. Mariam continued her interest in the Press and gave us a small grant to bring five women to Copenhagen in 1980 and to organize two weeks of workshops and panels on women’s studies.

Even after she left Ford in 1982, Mariam’s interest in the Press never flagged. She became a very active member of the Board of Directors of the Press and remained on our board until she passed away last month. While she was not as active as she would have liked to be this past year or so, whenever Florence and I met her for dinner at Parnell’s, the Press was always on her mind. I miss those dinners at Parnell’s and Sunday is a little lonelier for the lack of them.

It is always a little difficult to express thanks publically for the many years she contributed not only expertise to the Press but also donations. Without her support, our Galas would not have been as successful and we certainly would not have been able to print many of the books that are found in bookstores today…

 

Heidi Hartmann

Mariam Chamberlain was a cherished adviser to myself and to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. She was a founding member and a generous supporter from its inception in 1987. She served 18 years on our Board of Directors. She was knowledgeable and wise about the ways of foundations, and while she was unfailingly encouraging and supportive, I learned to pay attention to the rare instances in which she expressed skepticism about the likelihood of getting funding for some particular project or other. More often her suggestions of where to go and whom to meet with led to productive relationships for IWPR. She understood that nonprofits would actually sometimes have negative profits, and I recall one instance when several of IWPR’s board members were a bit agitated about a couple of years in the red in a row, when she said something like, “aren’t deficits normal for nonprofits?” and then she lent us funds so we could pay our bills until some expected grants arrived. Her general view seemed to be that if an endeavor was worthwhile it might go through some ups and downs but it would prove its worth in the long run. And she was in it for the long run.

Mariam and I both studied economics at similar institutions and knew many of the same people and, despite the difference of a generation, had had some of the same experiences in being a small minority in a male-dominated field. I believe I first met Mariam at a business meeting of the American Economics Association, probably in the early 1980s when a group of progressive members was trying to pass a set of resolutions. My cohort was sitting together, and when our resolutions would come up we would all raise our hands while the rest of the hands remained down, except for one, a small, older, very professional-looking woman. The content and the outcome of the motions are long forgotten, but I recall Mariam like it was yesterday. That event provided a hint of the deep and abiding radicalism that was Mariam.

I got to know Mariam better at the 1987 NWSA meetings held at Spellman College when we, both being frugal, stayed in the dorms and asked them to assign us a roommate and we got each other. Just then in the process of forming IWPR, I shared my dreams for IWPR and we shared some personal stories in late night discussions. My mother is virtually the same age as Mariam and came to America on her own in 1938, and so I like Mariam was an immigrant daughter. And like her I rose up from poverty through getting good grades and earning a scholarship to a top school. Perhaps because Mariam was so much like my mother (both very smart, courageous, kind, and persistent), I thought of Mariam as my intellectual mother, an intellectual version of my own working-class mother.

Mariam loved IWPR because we use economics to advance women and she knew how much difference having numbers makes in the policy world. She loved being part of that world through IWPR. She valued the fellowship we named after her in 2001. IWPR typically funds a young woman en route to graduate school to work at IWPR for an academic year to learn practical research skills in a policy setting. More than 100 young people apply every year, and thousands of graduating students learn about Mariam and the opportunity to use social science to help achieve social justice. I am very pleased to let you know that Mary Rubin and the Borrego Foundation have generously provided IWPR with a challenge grant of $95,000 to honor Mariam’s 95 years by expanding our Mariam K. Chamberlain fellowship to give an opportunity to a second fellow each year.

Mariam’s choice to recognize the Feminist Press, the National Council for Research on Women, and IWPR in her will reflects her lifelong commitment to the radical idea of considering women fully human. Many of us here share that commitment and share our love of Mariam….

 

Image Sources:  Mariam Kenosian Chamberlain from Radcliffe Yearbook, 1939 and New York Times obituary (April 7, 2013).