Harvard Department of City and Regional Planning Program Denies Admission to a Woman

In 1961 Phyllis Richman applied to the Harvard Department of City and Regional Planning. 

The department responded "...our experience, even with brilliant students, has been that married women find it difficult to carry out careers in planning, and hence tend to have some feeling of waste about the time and effort spent in professonal education. (This is, of course, true of almost all graduate professional studies.)" The full letter from Harvard in 1961.

Richman never finished her application to Harvard and pursued a career in writing. She found the old letter going through her attic recently and thought that it was time to finally respond, "The problem, I suspect, was the narrowness of your time frame. Google tells me that your wife earned two master’s degrees and a doctorate, and built an impressive resume in research, conference planning and social action. Do you still think of her graduate studies as a waste of time?" Her full response.

I can't decide if reading the APA's Salary Survey Summary is hopeful or still a little frustrating?

The gender gap in earnings still exists, though it has changed slightly for the better in the last four years. For example, in 2008, females earned 85 cents on the dollar, whereas earnings in 2012 are up to 88 cents on the dollar. The gender gap grows with increasing experience.