The year was 1935, and our publication was recognizing a landmark event.
“After 31 years on the faculty of the University of California, Dr. Jessica B. Peixotto will retire this month with the distinction of becoming the first woman emeritus professor in the history of the institution,” we wrote.
Jessica Peixotto is not a household name, but she was a leading light in economics and social science at a time when almost no women served in leadership roles at American universities.
In 1900, she became the second woman to earn a Ph.D. at UC Berkeley. Four years later, she became the first full-time female professor there, specializing in cost of living for American households. She was initially hired in the economics department and later founded Cal’s social welfare school.
As we wrote in 1924, “Dr. Jessica Blanche Peixotto of the University of California has the distinction of being the only woman occupying a chair of economics in an American college. In a recent interview, she stated that she had the satisfaction of helping to establish the first social training course at the University of California, where she found real joy in her work.”
According to a 1980 profile written for us by historian Norton Stern, “She was born in 1864, the only daughter and the eldest of the five children of the Raphael Peixottos. She was raised in San Francisco. Of Sephardic descent, her grandfather had arrived in America from Amsterdam in 1807.”
Raphael Peixotto, who lived from 1837 to 1905, served as president of San Francisco’s Congregation Emanu-El. He was a “merchant by day, a student by night,” our founding editor Rabbi Jacob Voorsanger, said of him in a 1947 article.
Raphael co-founded a dry-goods company in the city and then turned to real estate and other retail endeavors. “To him, however, business was only a means to a livelihood,” we wrote. “Fond of literature and of religion, he spent all of his leisure time at study and in contributions to the cultural life of his city.”
Despite his interest in culture and study, he didn’t seem especially interested in his only daughter’s academic ambitions.
She graduated from high school. But “because her father disapproved of college for girls she stayed home for over a decade,” according to our 1980 profile of her.
In that one sentence, there’s a lot of room for imagination about Jessica’s goals and plans. But she couldn’t be dissuaded.
“In 1891 she enrolled at the University of California and received her bachelor’s degree in 1894,” we continued. “In 1900 she was awarded her doctorate, the second given to a woman by the university.… She attained the rank of full professor in 1918, being the first woman at the university to attain that position.”
We also noted that “Dr. Peixotto was described as blue-eyed, dark-haired and a modest dresser. She was said to have been strong-minded, self-sufficient and a polished hostess. Jessica cherished her Jewish heritage.”
Whether or not she was a polished hostess, she was definitely a polished academic who served on many boards and was a lauded public speaker.
“A lecture on ‘Labor and Leisure’ was delivered last night at Equality Hall, 139 Albion Avenue, by Miss Jessica Peixotto, at the invitation of the Socialist organization,” we wrote in 1908.
“The discourse was heard with evident interest by the audience which nearly filled the hall. Miss Peixotto expressed the opinion that the social problem, which she said is now going through a crisis, must be worked out collectively and not individually, if success is to be accomplished. She held that individual effort would merely tend to inequality.… Heaven pictured as a place of rest, she believed, is not the goal of man, because men would weary of eternal leisure. They would not be content to stand still.”
Peixotto didn’t marry. She died in 1941 at her Berkeley home. In her obituary, we wrote, “Dr. Peixotto recently celebrated her 77th birthday when she received the good wishes of hosts of admiring friends.”
According to UC Berkeley, her status was unique: No women were hired after Peixotto in the economics department until the mid-1970s. But her most lasting contribution is likely in the realm of uniting pure economics with a sensible, person-first, proto-feminist point of view.
Here are her own words, from 1924:
“Economics has been called the ‘dismal science,’ and pure economics is rather forbidding. There is nothing of the spirit in it. Everything is desperately materialistic.
“Mere human beings seem to be left out of the equation of economics. They seem buried under the materialistic mass. They seem to exist for the sake of things, not the things for the sake of men, women and children.
“Social economics gets away from this point of view. It is more human. It recognizes that the great resource is not steel or timber or coal or power or land — it is human life.”