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Weekly UpdatesA discussion of the progenitors and pioneers of the vocational guidance movement must include the contributions of Helen Bradford Thompson Woolley and M. Edith Campbell, who together shaped the legacy of the Vocational Bureau of Cincinnati between the years of 1909 and 1926. Campbell and Woolley created names for themselves in their respective communities before bringing together their talents for only 1 decade to facilitate potent change in the vocational landscape for women and children. The two women expertly wielded the power of research to promote social reform and transformation in a time when women, like children, were to be seen and not heard. This article brings together the story of these two prominent women and the legacy they created at the Vocational Bureau of Cincinnati.
Understanding the socially constructed role of women at the turn of the century assists in the appreciation of the accomplishments of these two courageous women. Scientific discussions by men such as W. L. Distant, William James, and G. H. Schneider, at the time, alleged that women were nothing more than frail and ignorant. Science deemed that the sole female traits of vanity, egotism, irritableness, and nervousness were transformed only by the experience of motherhood. These types of narratives commonly served as validation for men to exclude women with their "inborn" limitations from educational and occupational opportunities. Within this defeatist environment, two women challenged and changed the social and vocational fabric for women and children in America.
Helen Bradford Thompson Woolley
Helen Bradford Thompson was born on November 6, 1874, in Chicago, to parents who enthusiastically supported her educational aspirations (James, James, & Boyer, 1971). Woolley attended the University of Chicago after graduating valedictorian in her class from Englewood High School (Dalton & Evans, 2004; James et al., 1971). John Dewey, Woolley's professor at the University of Chicago, strongly advocated for educational reform (Dalton & Evans, 2004; Rosenberg, 1982). Jane Addams and Florence Kelly inspired Woolley as a student with their advocacy and social justice efforts while she volunteered at Hull House (Dalton & Evans, 2004; Milar, 1999).
Under the direction of James R. Angell, Woolley's doctoral thesis was the first major scientific experimental research study comparing the mental traits of men and women (Milar, 2000; Thompson, 1903) and became the most significant clash with societal norms attempted by any of the female psychologists at the time. She directly challenged the nonempirical, yet accepted psychological writings on the biological basis of the inferiority of women. In addition, she made substantial changes in the way research would be reported in the future. Woolley matched the control group and the treatment group in social, economic, and educational background; controlled for confounding variables; and refrained from using distorted distributions of data (Rosenberg, 1982). She offered detailed descriptions of her administration of psychological tests, listed sources of error, and reported the scores of each test (Dalton & Evans, 2004). Unlike her colleagues, Woolley, following in Francis Galton's footsteps, reported and graphed the distribution of all the scores. By doing this, she found that the distribution curve of the female participants in her study overlapped the distribution curve of the male participants in her study (Rosenberg, 1982). Her novel approach to writing about research allowed others to easily reproduce her study and offered a window into her interpretation of her data.
The results of her doctoral thesis took into account an assortment of individual differences yet demonstrated significant similarities between the sexes. In the minor differences that did occur between the sexes, she pioneered the concept that nurture/environment rather than nature/biology attributed for the few differences discovered between the sexes (Dalton & Evans, 2004; Scarborough & Furumoto, 1987). Woolley earned her doctorate from the University of Chicago summa cum laude in 1900 and published her doctoral thesis, Psychological Norms in Men and Women, in 1903 (James et al., 1971; Thompson, 1903). By using this title, she pioneered the use of "norms" as a noun, but as a consequence, misspellings of the title often occurred (Dalton & Evans, 2004). Her published research on gender differences discouraged the use of biological determinism to oppress women and offered the scientific data they needed to find roles outside the home (Rosenberg, 1982). Although many of her male counterparts at the time doubted her research, psychologists no longer created narratives conjecturing differences between the male and female brain (Rosenberg, 1982).
Upon obtaining her doctorate degree in philosophy and neurology, Woolley studied in Paris and Berlin for a year as part of a fellowship from the Association of Collegiate Alumnae (Dalton & Evans, 2004; James et al., 1971). After returning to the United States in 1901, Woolley became a professor of psychology at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts and later became director of their psychology laboratory, which Woolley fought to establish (Dalton & Evans, 2004; James et al., 1971). She left Mount Holyoke College in 1905 to marry Dr. Paul Gerhardt Woolley and moved to the Philippines, where her husband served as a director of the Serum Laboratory in Manila (James et al., 1971). Woolley became an experimental psychologist for the Philippines Bureau of Education. Because the law only required children to attend school for 3 years, Woolley determined which 3 years of a child's life would be optimal for school attendance (Dalton & Evans, 2004). Her husband accepted a job in Bangkok in 1907 to head a new serum laboratory, and Woolley became Bangkok's Chief Inspector of Health until she returned to the United States in late 1907 to give birth to their first child (Dalton & Evans, 2004).
In 1908, the new family settled in Nebraska before moving to Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1909 when Woolley became a part-time professor at the University of Cincinnati (James et al., 1971; Milar, 1999). Because prohibition against married women holding faculty positions made full-time employment impossible (James et al., 1971; Scarborough & Furumoto, 1987), she published a journal article offering a thorough analysis of the state of psychological research along with her recommendations on improving research methods (Woolley, 1910). Woolley commented that psychological research had changed the historic argument of women's biological inferiority to men as the reason that women injure society by becoming educated and career oriented.
M. Edith Campbell
Born Mary Edith Campbell in 1875 in Ripley, Ohio, Campbell referred to herself as M. Edith Campbell (Ames, 1963). Her paternal great grandfather, Thomas E. Kirker, served as Ohio's first goverment and cemented her family's political ties in the state (Ames, 1963). Campbell's older sister (by 13 years), Elizabeth, became inspired to pursue a career as a physician after finding Campbell the help she needed in overcoming a hip deformity (Zapoleon, 1985). After her formal training, Elizabeth insisted on and offered Campbell the opportunity to study at the University of Cincinnati (Zapoleon, 1985). During this time, Elizabeth worked with William Howard Taft's wife on the Cincinnati Training School for Nurses while Taft served as an Ohio Superior Court judge (Zapoleon, 1985).
After completing a master of arts degree in economics at the University of Cincinnati in 1906 (Lakes, 1995), Campbell took a position as an Assistant in Economics at the university (Zapoleon, 1985). She taught Economic Theory, Economic History, and created a new class titled Women Wage Earners, which explored women's current economic status and role in industry (Zapoleon, 1985). During her research for the new class, she became impressed with the National Child Labor Committee and organized several local organizations to bring the National Child Labor Committee to Cincinnati for its third annual conference (Zapoleon, 1985). Three thousand came to Cincinnati for the 3-day conference where Addams stressed the need for an investigation into the labor of women and children (Zapoleon, 1985). Addams believed that choosing the wrong vocation would lead to juvenile delinquency and that vocational guidance could therefore deter crime (Milar, 1999). Thanks to Campbell, Addams's message would soon be felt in Cincinnati, Ohio, and throughout the United States.
Birth of the Vocational Bureau of Cincinnati: 1906-1909
On September 21, 1906, J. D. Schmidlapp, a Cincinnati banker and philanthropist, received a cable from France notifying him that his daughter Charlotte died in an automobile accident (Ames, 1963; Zapoleon, 1985). schmidlapp's wife and other daughter had died in a railroad accident 6 years earlier (Zapoleon, 1985). He created the Charlotte Rose Schmidlapp Trust Fund in her honor and looked to the community for ideas to promote the welfare of young women (Zapoleon, 1985). Campbell, through her work at the University of Cincinnati, analyzed the 600 ideas suggested for the trust fund. The committee selected one of Campbell's personal proposals of a girl's scholarship program for education and training (Zapoleon, 1985).
In 1907, the Schmidlapp Trust Fund hired Campbell to investigate opportunities for girls and women and to manage the loans distributed by the trust fund (Ames, 1963; Lakes, 1995; Zapoleon, 1985). Schmidiapp also paid for Campbell to make trips to Chicago, New York, and Boston to visit Addams, Sophonisba Breckenridge, Mary Van Kleek, Edward Devine, Frank Parsons, and Meyer Bloomfield (Zapoleon, 1985). In her first annual report, in 1907, Campbell recommended a local scientific study of the conditions of women wage earners to improve on the industrial education of women and their working conditions (Zapoleon, 1985). That same year, Frank Dyer, the Cincinnati superintendent of schools, expressed a need for public school guidance services to assist Cincinnati's youth with personal and occupational adjustment (Picchioni & Bonk, 1983). In 1909, in response to Campbell's recommendation, Schmidlapp financed separately from the trust fund a vocation and employment bureau to help place girls and women seeking jobs (Zapoleon, 1985). The privately funded Cincinnati Vocation and Employment Bureau was launched with Campbell at the helm.
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