An Interview With a Persistent Woman

Abstract

An interview with Helen Farmer reveals the highlights of her professional life and the unusual road she took to her eventual position as a professor whose theories and mentoring of students have greatly influenced the field of counseling psychology. Also revealed are some of the personal qualities that led to her success.You may think you know Helen Farmer-that gentle woman you have heard presenting her work on women's career motivation. Behind that gentle demeanor is a determined woman who hitchhiked to New York city to work in East Harlem in the early 1950s, discovered Karen Horney and Simone de Beauvoir a decade before most of us did while she was trying to define her role as a minister's wife who is herself a minister, went to Iran alone to do research on women, learned to snorkel in her 60s although she isn't much of a swimmer, and has recently taught a community course on Islam. She credits her persistence for her success.In the 1960s, many theorists were arguing that women's propensity to choose stereotypically feminine careers and to have low aspirations for career achievement was "natural." Helen Farmer's ground breaking research showed that women's aspirations could be raised and that elements in the environment, such as support, were related to eventual career outcomes for women. Her findings helped to put to rest the idea that low career achievement was natural for women. When I asked her about what she considered to be high points in her career, I was surprised when she first mentioned attaining a I would like to acknowledge the help of the late Naomi Meara in preparing the results of this interview for publication. As coeditor of the Legends series, she worked tirelessly to help me select the most important parts of a much longer interview to include. Her dedication to this task was typical of the way she fulfilled all of her professional projects-with high standards, enthusiasm, and humor. Special thanks to Helen Katz of the University of Illinois, Department of Educational Psychology, who transcribed the original recording of this interview.