The Secret History of Wonder Woman

In the fall of 1926, Olive Byrne began work on a Ph.D. is psychology at Columbia. She earned her master’s degree after two semesters of classes, completing 30 credits by the summer of 1927. Around the same time, Marston was hired as a lecturer at Columbia for the upcoming academic year. Since his work at American University at the beginning of the decade, he was on a downward career path from full professor and department chair to assistant professor (at Tufts) and now to lecturer.

Lepore explains that the Psychology Department at Columbia was booming, causing a shortage of faculty and an excess of graduate students. What’s more, women now made up a greater share of doctoral students in all disciplines nationwide than at any time in the past. Because the glass ceiling prevented them from many positions, and women often left the workforce for childcare duties, many university administrators concluded that the number of women graduate students should be limited. Olive Byrne, like many others, may thus have been nudged out of her doctoral program; she almost completed the required coursework but wrote no dissertation. She also, however, left to raise a baby: Marston and Holloway’s.