Join us for our December Guest Lecture Series presentation, “Trailblazer: How Katharine Bement Davis Advanced Women’s Equality in the Workplace, at the Polls, and in the Bedroom,” by Anya Jabour, Ph.D. Jabour is the Regents Professor of History at the University of Montana.
About the presentation:
Katharine Bement Davis (1860-1935) was a true trailblazer. One of the first women in the US to earn a PhD, she went on to become the first superintendent of New York’s Reformatory for
Women at Bedford Hills. Subsequently, she became the first female Commissioner of Corrections for New York City, where she quelled a riot and instituted reform. She spent the final decade of her career directing the Bureau of Social Hygiene, a privately funded think tank committed to combating commercialized sex and curbing the spread of sexually transmitted infections. While there, she conducted research for the first comprehensive study of female sexuality.
But Dr. Davis did not only blaze new trails for herself. At every stage of her career, she also advanced equality for women as a group. At the Bedford Reformatory, she provided educational
and recreational opportunities for the inmates; she also hired a cohort of highly educated women to work as physicians and psychologists. While she tackled what one colleague called “a man’s job” as Commissioner of Corrections, she also advocated women’s voting rights as an officer of the national suffrage organization. Finally, by publishing the results of her extensive study of women’s sexual desires and experiences, she redefined the parameters of “normal” female sexuality.
Based on extensive research in Katharine Davis’s personal papers, institutional records, and historic publications, this presentation about an important—but overlooked—figure in US history will highlight how she advanced women’s equality in the workplace, at the polls, and in the bedroom.
