- INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENTS AND OBSTACLES TO ACHIEVEMENT 79
of the tutor or of the pupil, the same thing happened every day:
everything swam in front of the princess' eyes, she saw and heard
nothing, but only sensed her father's dry, stern face next to her,
was aware of his breath and his scent, and thought only of getting
out of the study as soon as possible so that she could understand
the problem in the spacious freedom of her own room. The old man
made extraordinary efforts: noisily moving the chair he was sitting
in back and forth, he struggled not to lose his temper; but nearly
always lost it, shouted at her, and sometimes threw the notebook.
The princess had given an incorrect answer.
"What a stupid thing to say!" shouted the prince, shoved the
notebook aside, and quickly turned away. But then he immediately
got up, walked around, touched the princess' hair, and sat down
again.
He came closer and continued his reasoning.
"No, no, Princess," he said, when at last the princess had
taken the notebook with the assignments in it and was prepar-
ing to leave. "Mathematics is a great thing, young lady. I don't
want you to be like those silly debutantes. Perseverance brings
pleasure." He stroked her cheek with his hand. "The frivolity
will eventually jump out of your head." [War and Peace, Book 1,
Part 1, Chapt. 22]
The vividness of this scene shows that Tolstoy must have drawn it from real
life. Even an enlightened father, such as Tolstoy's Prince Bolkonskii, who loved his
daughter and wanted more for her than the frivolous life offered to most women in
the Russian aristocracy, did not know how to carry out his own good intentions.
Sexual harassment. This painful topic has apparently not been much talked about
in relation to mathematics specifically. Keith and Keith (2000) report that at a
1988 conference on women in mathematics and the sciences every woman present
had experienced discrimination, not only "gender harassment... but more brutal
sexual harassment." The harm that can be done by sexual harassment includes
creating anxiety that interferes with work, discouraging women from seeking help
in a professor's office, and blocking professional advancement for women who protest
harassment or reject unwanted advances.
To struggle against all of these obstacles was the task of heroic individual
women for many centuries, and what they achieved seems in many ways miracu-
lous. Who would have guessed, for example, that a journal named The Woman
Inventor was published more than a century ago?^5 But real progress could be
expected only when society as a whole undertook to provide support. To overcome
these obstacles legislation was enacted at the federal level during the 1960s for-
bidding discrimination on the basis of gender. To overcome the more entrenched
and subtle problems of societal discouragement and lack of role models a variety of
measures have been introduced, including special workshops and institutes devoted
to introducing women to mathematical research and the founding of the Associa-
tion for Women in Mathematics in 1971. All major universities and corporations
(^5) It was published by Charlotte Smith (1840-1917) and managed only two issues, in April and
June of 1891 (Stanley, 1992).