Housing for Women
Throughout the 1940s and ’50s, Katharine’s donations to women students had been limited to the taxi fund and other smaller items, as the bulk of her time and money was committed to the development of oral birth control. After Enovid gained FDA approval and came on the market in 1960, she was able to turn her focus to MIT.
By the early 1960s, Katharine corresponded regularly with Dorothy Weeks (SM ‘23, PhD ‘36, course XVIII) a researcher in George Harrison’s Spectrometry Laboratory. The two shared a mutual goal of increasing the number of women students at MIT.
In an undated letter to Weeks, Katharine wrote, “I believe, - if we can get them properly housed, - that the best scientific education in our country will be open to them permanently. …what I do want to be sure of is that those who can, & want to, have the open doors, & suitable healthy living conditions, - then I can rest in peace! It is a great comfort to me that you see the whole question just as I do - especially in regard to women's scientific contribution to our civilization.”