When Barbara Webster arrived at the University of California, Davis in the 1960s, her mere presence was groundbreaking, especially in an era of extreme inequities and barriers to women in science. She became the first and only female faculty member in the Department of Agronomy, which later became the Department of Plant Sciences.
“You can’t even begin to understand,” said Mary Anne Payne, who, as a colleague and personal friend, witnessed firsthand the male-dominanted milieu that Barbara was stepping into. “Men didn’t think a woman could be effective as a professor, as a faculty member or as a high-level administrator – all things that Barbara demonstrated she was brilliant at.”
In her early months at Davis, Barbara was, as she put it, “underemployed” as a lab technician; she possessed a doctorate in biology from Harvard University and held a major National Science Foundation grant in hand. Her husband, Grady L. Webster, had been appointed as a full professor in the Department of Botany at UC Davis.
In 1967, she was hired as a Lecturer and Assistant Research Morphologist, split between the Department of Agronomy and Range Science and the Department of Vegetable Crops. Over the next 12 years, Barbara held part- and full-time positions, sometimes paid in soft money and sometimes in hard money.
Out of necessity and her own determination to escape positions below her experience, Barbara reoriented her focus from botany to agronomy.
“My mother essentially retrained herself,” said Susan Webster, her daughter. “That process was a real setback for her career in terms of the time and the toll that it took on her. Yet one more example of the ways that highly trained academic women often got the short end of the stick.”
In 1979, nearly a decade after she arrived to the university, Barbara was hired as a full-time professor of agronomy and as an agronomist at the Agriculture Experiment Station. After another ten years, having proved her capabilities and excellence as both researcher and instructor, Barbara became the assistant vice chancellor of research for the UC Davis campus in 1989. She stepped away from the two positions when she retired in 1992.
“She held an irregular position when she first started,” said Lisa Baird, a former graduate student of Barbara’s and a current professor of biology at the University of San Diego. “One of the amazing things she did was regularize her position as a female scientist in a male dominated department.”
Throughout the ‘80s and into the ‘90s, Barbara traveled to universities across the country to give talks on the opportunities for women in the sciences. In an essay she presented during a luncheon at the 1988 American Institute of Biological Sciences in Davis, California, and later published in the journal BioScience, Barbara had this to say:
There are no longer laws that limit women's access, and certain overtly discriminatory policies and practices have been eliminated. These changes, many allege, have taken care of the so-called problem of women in the academy. [. . .] While it is certainly true that women are now moving into tenure-track professorial positions, there are still relatively few, particularly in powerful positions. The hiring of women faculty lags far behind the enrollment of women students. Women are concentrated in certain fields and at lower ranks. In every field, on average, women earn less than their male counterparts. [39:2 (1989): 96-98]
According to Baird, one of Barbara’s favorite phrases was, “Not every dragon is worth slaying.” An important message underlies the statement, because Barbara was also indicating that there were dragons to slay in a society that had structural mechanisms in place to suppress the advancement of women.
One of the many ways Barbara addressed the issues that women faced in both academia and society at large, and in addition to the national talks that she gave, was through her mentorship of her female students, something that was uncommon even for male students of the era.
“Before it was fashionable, and back when there was a ‘sink or swim’ mentality, Barbara worked very hard to be a great mentor to her students,” said Baird. “It is because of her – her guidance and her advice – that I’m where I am today.”
Payne continued this thought, saying that Barbara was always open and willing to help out her students. “She helped them be the best they could possibly be.”
In her field of agronomy, Barbara was recognized as an expert in plant development and structure. She made significant contributions to the understanding of nitrogen fixation in legumes and the environmental stress and yield of crop plants, among others. In total, her academic career spanned five decades and included numerous published papers and book chapters.
Importantly, she also became the first woman treasurer, and later served as president of the Botanical Society of America. In 2006, she became a distinguished fellow of the society – its highest honor – with one letter writer noting surprise that she hadn’t received the distinction earlier.
“Barbara had a fine mind, a kind heart, a drive tempered by adversity and a will to create positive change,” said Payne. “That is why she was so successful.”
In her personal life, Barbara was a voracious reader who had an active book club with friends, enjoyed learning new things, and loved traveling. She passed away in 2017 at the age of 88.
Barbara, an accomplished and influential professor of agronomy, strove to create a safe space for women to excel on the UC Davis campus and was a fierce advocate for the increased participation of women and minorities in science.
Throughout her decades-long career, she not only stood her ground to slay the dragons of a patriarchal system and pioneered a path for women to follow by regularizing her position in plant sciences, she also set an outstanding precedent of excellence for the department to follow.