Barbara Bergmann - History

History

Barbara Bergmann’s parents and grandparents, fleeing anti-Semitism, and immigrated to the United States from Europe in 1914 and she was born in 1927 to a Romanian-born mother and Polish-born father in the Bronx. Her parents worked instead of finishing school, but they expected Barbara to adhere to the standards and traditions of American life and eventually go to college. At the age of five, she started formulating ideas about feminism, pursuing equality for men and women, because she wanted to be an independent person when she grew up, and that required money and equality. During the Great Depression, Bergmann developed a strong belief that the government should provide resources and help to individuals who faced uncontrollable circumstances or did not have the resources and knowledge to provide for themselves.

Bergmann received a scholarship to Cornell University and majored in mathematics. While in college pursuing her love for “creating models of simple processes that might or might not resemble what goes on in the actual economy,” she discovered Gunnar Myrdal’s book An American Dilemma that told of the racial inequality in the South. Myrdal’s book ignited an interest in race discrimination that eventually developed into a concern for sex discrimination and followed Bergmann throughout her career.

After Barbara Bergmann graduated with a B.A. in 1948, the recession, discrimination against Jews, and workplace sex segregation made it difficult to find a job that was interesting. Bergmann took a job with the federal government in the New York Office of the Bureau of Labor Statistics where she fielded public inquiries; she was head of the inquiries unit after a year. A firsthand experience with the discrimination of a black employee at the Bureau of Labor Statistics illuminated how real and pervasive race discrimination was at the time. Harvey Purdy was the only black employee at the New York office and, when Barbara managed to get him promoted, he was demoted shortly after and the job was given to someone else.

Bergmann received her Ph.D. from Harvard University (1959) and developed an interest in computer simulated economics, realizing that economics should be based more on observation and field research than solely theorizing. Research and experience has led Barbara Bergmann to develop theories and ideas about government policy, the implementation of observation into economics, and racial and gender equality.