PALISADES PROFILE:
Dr. Heidi Hartmann Winner of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship

Dr. Heidi Hartmann, a Palisades resident for 22 years, received a MacArthur fellowship award in 1994 in recognition of her creative work in the field of women and economics. This award has the nickname of the ìgenius grant.î
Heidi says the award came ìpretty much out of the blue.î Although she suspects she may have had dinner with one of the 100, or so, anonymous nominatorsóa woman who said: ìHeidi, you really need to get the MacArthur grant.î Heidi responded: ìYeah, sure, so does everybody.î
The no-strings-attached grant pays according to the age of the recipientómore for older winners than for younger. Ideally, the money is meant, according to Heidi, ìto allow you to stop doing what youíre doing and take full advantage of the fellowship. But, for me, I decided that the best would be to just go on with what I was doingócontinuing to build the Institute for Womenís Policy Research (IWPR).î
Heidi founded the independent, non-profit IWPR in 1987. Its mission, stated on its informative website (www.iwpr.org), is as ìa public policy research organization dedicated to informing and stimulating the debate on public policy issues of critical importance to women and their families.
IWPR focuses on issues of poverty and welfare, employment and earnings, work and family issues, the economics and social aspects of health care and domestic violence, and womenís civic and political participation.î Now, thatís a lot to cover. Her staff has grown to 23, including ìseven or eightî on a Ph.D. level.
Heidi, herself, has a B.A. in economics from Swarthmore College and M.Phil. (Master of Philosophy) and Ph.D. degrees in Economics from Yale. She brings her training in quantitative techniques to focus in on these huge issues.
Heidi first came to the Washington area to take a job with the Civil Rights Commission, doing research on workplace discrimination, by gender or race. Later, while at the National Academy of Sciences, she wrote a report on the well-known ìDenver nursesî case. The nurses had sued because they were being paid less than men who were performing identical work but under a different job title.
After realizing how social science research could apply to policy issues, she asked herself ìHow hard can it be to set up your own institute?î She laughs now, ìAs it turned out, it was very hard.î
The IWPR is about two-thirds funded by grants from such notable foundations as the Ford, MacArthur, Anne E. Casey, Cafritz, and the Rockefeller Family Fund.
Additional money comes from individual and organizational memberships, donor circles, and other gifts and bequests.
At present, the Instituteís two main issues are social security reform and pay equity. The social security reform movement illustrates some of the complexities of social policy. The current social security system helps redistribute income to lower income workers.
Heidi notes that ìnot everyone knows this, and maybe, if they did, everybody wouldnít like it.î But she is very concerned that ìthe various attempts to privatize social security will end up hurting many women, helping, perhaps, only some high-income women.
IWPR seeks a policy that will be fair to all women, not aid one group at the expense of the other.î Pay equity becomes increasingly crucial because there is growing acceptance that women will probably work most of their lives.
Heidi states that ìmost people donít think of this as being reversible anymore. Women see the need of taking care of their own income, career, pension.î
Growing up in Toms River, New Jersey, Heidi saw this in her own family. Her mother had come to America from Germany in 1938 but stayed when war broke out. She supported her two children, working in a small fabric store when Heidi was studying economics in college.
Heidi bought home the idea of ìfringe benefits.î Her mother asked the progressive owner of her store who consulted his accountant. The result was health insurance and a pension.
The IWPR works closely with the White House staff, agencies, other womenís groups, and Congressional aides. Personnel are frequently called on by the media, appearing on, for example, the Lehrer News Hour, Good Morning America, The CBS Evening News, and National Public Radio. The Institute has been featured in articles in the New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. Invitations come for Rose Garden bill-signings and for Oval office meetings.
Heidi hopes that the near future will bring more aid to women and men in their changing roles. She feels that men are taking on more family responsibilities but that institutional support is still lagging. She advocates increased paid family leave, better day care and a shorter work week.
Well, how does ìa geniusî live? Much like the rest of usówith a house full of holiday clutter, a gracious husband fixing a sliding door that wonít slide, a new puppy that goes up on forbidden furniture and two humorous daughters who still can (and, then, do) sing Key Schoolís ìalphabetical statesî song. A third daughter lives in Alaska and works for Alaska Public Radio.
It is a typical, lively, non-pedantic Palisades home. Heidi says she lives here because of the high quality of life: for the strength of the public schools, so she can take that puppy for walks in Battery Kemble, and because the Palisades feels like a small town, neither suburb nor city. óP. McG. with Frances McFall