She faced skepticism and sarcasm, and then came Anita Hill

As is true for many psychologists, personal experience drives Louise Fitzgerald?s line of work. Her passage into academic psychology has been bumpy: After failing out of the University of Florida in her early 20s, she returned to her hometown of Fort Walton Beach, Fla., married a military man and had three children.

Her husband?s work took them around the globe, and one day, at age 30, she woke up bored and listless in Bangkok. Fitzgerald was unhappy with her marriage because her husband, a traditionally minded child of the 1950s, expected her to "be at home waiting for him when he got home from work," she says. He fought Fitzgerald?s longings for an education and a career because he didn?t think women should work.

"And also because nobody told him any other way to be a man," says Fitzgerald, who blames the cultural climate of a bygone era, and not him personally, for his attitude. "He was caught in this too. He knows that now." Anxious and depressed over the situation, Fitzgerald went to a psychiatrist for advice. She was shocked when he told her he didn?t have time for her case, that he "had more important things to do than waste [his] time on a neurotic housewife." For Fitzgerald, the incident was a slap in the face because it sent a message that she wasn?t worth helping. To prevent other women in her predicament from receiving the same treatment, Fitzgerald decided to pursue a career in gender equity in counseling. When she and her husband returned to the United States, Fitzgerald enrolled in the undergraduate psychology program at the University of Maryland. Her high grades there earned her a position in the university?s honor program. Unfortunately, though, her husband opposed her studies, and their marital strife worsened. Just before her graduation, Fitzgerald and her husband separated, then divorced. Her bachelor?s degree in hand, Fitzgerald entered the doctoral counseling psychology program at Ohio State University. The couple?s children stayed behind with her husband, visiting Fitzgerald during holidays and summers, which her neighbors considered scandalous. "I gave up a lot by not being there when my kids were little," says Fitzgerald. "And it was an incredible price to pay. I?m expecting my first grandchild, and I?m so excited. But there is also a sadness in terms of all the things I missed."

But, she feels that, ultimately, the gains have paid off. "It?s like that old song, ?Something?s lost and something?s gained by living every day,?" says Fitzgerald. "There was never any question about what I was working toward [for women]."

During her years at Ohio State, Fitzgerald?s interests evolved from gender bias in counseling to women?s career development. She was pleased to see growing numbers of women entering the work force, but she grew concerned that they weren?t obtaining the same professional position as men. She believed sexual harassment was a foremost barrier to their progress, so she focused her research on the issue. She thought she could use psychology to influence social policy, and saw research on harassment as a way to change women?s lives on a broader scale through law and policy "instead of one at a time" through therapy, she says.

As enthusiastic as she was about the research, however, it often met with skepticism and dismissal. People considered it a feminist fringe issue, an unknown, even a joke. But in the latter half of the 1980s, the issue began garnering serious legal attention, particularly when the Supreme Court deemed sexual harassment a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Then, in late 1991, the Anita Hill case hit. Suddenly it was "Oh my goodness, we have a social problem," says Fitzgerald.

?Bridget Murray