The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) presented Lotte Bailyn, Ph.D., a pioneer and leading scholar in the study of women, work and family in business and academia, with a prestigious honorary doctorate degree during the 85th Board of Governors Meeting on June 13th in Jerusalem, Israel.
Prof. Bailyn is the T. Wilson Professor of Management, Emerita, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management. As early as the 1960s, Prof. Bailyn was conducting groundbreaking research on women in the workforce and has continued to be a staunch voice calling for gender equity within academia, STEM fields, and the corporate world.
At the ceremony, HU President Asher Cohen conferred upon Prof. Bailyn the degree of Doctor Philosophiae Honoris Causa, “in honor of her life-long commitment to the study of working women; for radically re‑framing our perceptions of the professional and personal demands placed upon working women; in deep appreciation of her unwavering call for gender equality in the workplace, specifically in academia and corporate culture; in gratitude for her advocacy on the behalf of working women through organizational solutions, advisory boards, and professional committees; and for being an exemplar for professional women everywhere.
“It is a wonderful honor to get an honorary doctorate from the Hebrew University,” Bailyn says. “We have enjoyed our visits to Jerusalem immensely, and we have always admired the Israeli people and what they have accomplished.”
Prof. Bailyn’s novel approach radically changed the perception of work and personal lives as distinct spheres and demonstrated how this hinders our ability to resolve competing demands on working women. She framed issues within a larger, social context ─ highlighting ways in which women, families, and workplaces are negatively affected ─ and offered managerial and organizational solutions to better accommodate workers to achieve success. HU has drawn upon her work to establish guidelines for conducting peer reviews.
Prof. Bailyn has conducted studies of MIT alumni, the Xerox Corporation, biotech companies, universities, R&D centers, and others. She has also co-published comparative studies of American, Greek, Swedish, British, and Israeli working women.
Prof. Bailyn has received numerous awards, including the Distinguished Scholar/Practitioner Achievement Award and the Hughes Award for Careers Scholarship from the Academy of Management, the Work Life Legacy Award from the Families and Work Institute, the Graduate Society Medal from Radcliffe, and the Centennial Medal from the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
When Prof. Bailyn received her Ph.D., few faculty positions were available to women. She became the first woman faculty member at MIT’s Sloan School in the early 1970s – 16 years after she earned her degree – and, for a while, she was the only tenured one. This put her in a position to help women who followed, which happened quite rapidly.
Prof. Bailyn sat on advisory boards dealing with the advancement and inclusion of women in the sciences and corporate workforce, as well as national and institutional committees concerned with work, family, and diversity. She has served on the editorial board of numerous journals, including The Journal of Engineering and Technology Management, Human Relations and Community, and Work & Family.
Prof. Bailyn earned a Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in Social Psychology from Radcliffe College and graduated from Swarthmore College in 1951 with high honors in mathematics.
About the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem is Israel’s leading academic and research institution. Serving 24,000 students from 80 countries, it produces a third of Israel’s civilian research and is ranked 12th worldwide in biotechnology patent filings and commercial development. Faculty and alumni of the Hebrew University have won eight Nobel Prizes and a Fields Medal. For more information about the Hebrew University, please visit http://new.huji.ac.il/en.
