They didn't mind telling you that they thought women ought to be home.
Guion G. Johnson - NC Collection
More challenges faced by professional women came in the forms of outright discrimination and double-standards for women in the workplace. Many of the women we hear in the oral histories fought for success in the professional and academic arenas well before the women's liberation movement of the 1960s and 70s. Their pay and status was lower than those of men in comparable positions, and they also found it harder to secure professional positions, even if they were very well qualified.
Discrimination against women could be subtle or overt. Some universities, including UNC, refused to hire husbands and wives as faculty. If a woman's husband was a professor at the university, she would not be hired by that institution, no matter how strong her qualifications or distinguished her work.
Although many female trailblazers encountered men in their lives who were positive and supportive of their aspirations, not all men felt that way at the time. Guion Griffis Johnson recalls overhearing a prominent history professor at UNC declare that women were incompetent to teach at the university level.
Women coped with the double standards and negative attitudes toward their abilities in different ways. In hindsight, Olive Stone admits that she occasionally allowed others to take credit for some of her work in an attempt to avoid offending her male colleagues.
Most women indicate that their strategy for coping with discrimination was to focus on their goals and continue working hard and doing their very best in order to prove their worth and convince the men around them that they belonged in the professional realm.
