Born: 23 July 1892, United States
Died: 6 January 1984
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women creator Allison Tyra’s book Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work.
After earning her PhD, Icie Hoobler started working as an assistant chemist at Pittsburgh’s Western Pennsylvania Hospital. Among the sexist nonsense she faced there was the complete lack of a women’s bathroom, meaning she had to use a public restroom down the street. Limiting her trips to the bathroom led to acute inflammation of her kidneys, which her superiors used to try and urge her to take a year’s leave. She also wasn’t allowed to eat in the doctors’ dining hall because they were all men, but not allowed to eat in the nurses’ dining hall for bureaucratic reasons. She was also not invited to the annual staff banquet because her laboratory chief didn’t think she would want to spend the evening with “all those men.” She quit after two weeks. Fortunately, the president of the board of trustees cared enough to discuss the situation, and thanks to him, circumstances improved enough for Hoobler to return. That was, of course, not the end of the sexism she had to deal with, such as when she was invited to speak at an event where the organisers had assumed “Icie” was a man. When she arrived, she wasn’t even allowed to enter until her husband negotiated with the manager and the board of trustees re-voted on whether to allow her to speak.