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12Promoting equityMary W. GrayDepartment of Mathematics and StatisticsAmerican University, Washington, DC12.1 Introduction“I’m not a gentleman.” This phrase should alert everyone to the fact that thisis not a conventional statistics paper; rather it is about the issues of equity thatthe Elizabeth Scott Award addresses. But that was the phrase that markedmy entry onto the path for which I received the award. It had become obviousto me early in my career as a mathematician that women were not playing on alevel field in the profession. The overt and subtle discrimination was pervasive.Of course, it was possible to ignore it and to get on with proving theorems. ButI had met Betty Scott and other women who were determined not to remainpassive. Where better to confront the issues but the Council of the AmericanMathematical Society (AMS), the group that considered itself the guardian ofthe discipline. I arrived at one of its meetings, eager to observe the operationof the august group. “This meeting is open only to Council members,” I wastold. Secure in having read the AMS By-laws, I quoted the requirement thatthe Council meetings be open to all AMS members. “Oh,” said the presidentof the society, “it’s a gentlemen’s agreement that they be closed.” I utteredmy open-sesame and remained.However, the way the “old boys’ network” operated inspired many mathematiciansto raise questions at Council meetings and more generally. Resultswere often discouraging. To the notion of introducing blind-refereeing of AMSpublications, the response from our distinguished colleagues was, “But howwould we know the paper was any good if we didn’t know who wrote it?”Outside Council premises at a national mathematics meeting a well-knownalgebraist mused, “We once hired a woman, but her research wasn’t verygood.” Faced with such attitudes about women in mathematics, a group of usfounded the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM). In the 40+ yearsof its existence, AWM has grown to thousands of members from around theworld (about 15% of whom are men) and has established many travel grant129