Janet L. Norwood
Janet L. Norwood | |
---|---|
Douglass College |
Janet Lippe Norwood (December 11, 1923 – March 27, 2015) was an American
Biography
Born in Newark, New Jersey, Janet Norwood grew up in Irvington, and graduated from the New Jersey College for Women (now Douglass College) of
After she taught a year of political science at Wellesley College, she and her husband moved to Washington, where he entered Government service and became a U.S. Foreign Service Officer. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, they lived in Luxembourg and Brussels, where she and their two children accompanied him on assignment to the U.S. Mission to the European Communities.
Norwood started at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics as a part-time junior economist in the early 1980s. She rose to head the agency for thirteen years, confirmed by the U.S. Senate for four-year appointments, initially by President Jimmy Carter and twice by President Ronald Reagan. She took on management of the agency soon after the Nixon White House ordered the Bureau to cease holding press conferences on the occasion of the monthly release of employment and unemployment data. Immediately following that order, the Congressional Joint Economic Committee decided to restore the public airing of the data by holding public hearings at which it called the Bureau’s head to testify. Norwood developed a reputation for what the Committee cited, at the time of her retirement from Government service in 1991 and completion of 137 appearances over 13 year before it, her “integrity, professionalism, and impartiality.”
Norwood helped bring recognition to female presence and leadership, in a context where she was frequently the only woman at government agency and professional association meetings. Among the first group of women to be admitted to the Cosmos Club, in Washington, D.C., she became its first female president in 1995. When asked, especially by young women, for guidance about career development, she advised them to have a supportive husband. She had married at the end of her sophomore year of college, when her husband was a private in a World War II Army college training program.
During both her service as Commissioner of Labor Statistics or following government retirement, she served as head, board member, or senior adviser of professional organizations, including the
Honors and awards
Carnegie Mellon University, Florida International University, Rutgers University, and Harvard University awarded honorary doctorates to Norwood.
In 1974 she was elected as a
In 2015 the conference center at the Bureau of Labor Statistics was officially renamed in her honor as the Janet L. Norwood Conference and Training Center.[6]
Janet L. Norwood Awards
Since 2002, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, School of Public Health has a "Janet L. Norwood Award" to recognize outstanding women in statistics annually.[7] Previous recipients of the award include Jane F. Gentleman, Lynne Billard, and Nan Laird.
Since 2018, The Pennsylvania State University, Eberly College of Science has a "Science of Achievement Janet L. Norwood Graduate Scholarship in Statistics" awarded annually to an incoming Statistics Ph.D. student who has shown leadership, particularly in advancing careers for women, and research excellence.
Publications
Books
Norwood, Janet (May 1, 1995). Organizing To Count. Urban Institute Press.
Other
"Review of Research at the Bureau of Labor Statistics", by Janet L. Norwood and Cathryn Dippo, is the last section of the book The Professional Quest for Truth: A Social Theory of Science and Knowledge (1992), by Stephan Fuchs[8]
See also
References
- ISBN 978-0-87766-635-6.
- ^ "Profile: Janet L. Norwood". Bloomberg Businessweek. Archived from the original on December 7, 2013. Retrieved 4 December 2014.
- ^ "Janet Norwood Dies at 91; Led Labor Statistics Bureau". The New York Times. 5 April 2015. Retrieved 7 February 2017.
- ^ View/Search Fellows of the ASA Archived 2016-06-16 at the Wayback Machine, accessed 2016-08-20.
- ^ "Janet L. Norwood". National Academy of Public Administration. Archived from the original on 7 December 2014. Retrieved 4 December 2014.
- ^ Erica L. Groshen. 2016. An Introduction to “Politics and Federal Statistics” by Janet L. Norwood.
- ^ "Awards". University of Alabama at Birmingham, School of Public Health. Retrieved 4 December 2014.
- ^ Pickering, A. (1993). [Review of The Professional Quest for Truth: A Social Theory of Science and Knowledge., by S. Fuchs]. American Journal of Sociology, 98(6), 1487–1489. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2781841