Estelle R. Ramey, a Georgetown University endocrinologist
who never hesitated to craft a funny and pointed line to overturn
assumptions about the physiological differences and similarities between
women and men, died Sept. 8 at her home in Bethesda. She had Alzheimer's
disease.
Dr. Ramey, dubbed the "Mort Sahl of the women's movement"
and "George Burns with an X chromosome," burst into the headlines in
1970 when she challenged the assertion of a Democratic National
Committee official that women were unfit for the presidency or for
handling emergencies such as the Cuban Missile Crisis because of their
"raging storms of monthly hormonal imbalances."
As a credentialed expert in the field, "I was startled to learn that
ovarian hormones are toxic to brain cells," she wrote in a letter to the
Washington Evening Star. She pointed out that President John F. Kennedy
had Addison's disease, a chronic, severe hormonal imbalance, and that
his medications could result in dramatic mood swings.
"If it's testosterone the public wants in a president, as an
endocrinologist I can't recommend a 70-year-old man in the White House.
They should get a 16-year-old boy instead," she said. "It seems the only
thing the public doesn't want to see in a president is estrogen."
Men, she said, are clearly the weaker sex, and Mother Nature may well
be a radical feminist, based on the biological evidence. The female of
every species, she noted, is stronger in terms of stamina, longevity and
performance under stress.
"Men were designed for short, nasty, brutal lives. Women are designed
for long, miserable ones," she opined.
Dr. Ramey became a popular and much-sought speaker on society's myths
about how physiological gender differences affect political and social
roles. She won over an audience of conservative women in Winter Park,
Fla., and the graduates of Sidwell Friends School, where she was the
school's first female commencement speaker. Always good for a quote, she
appeared in major publications across the country and wrote two books,
numerous scientific articles and a piece ("Men's Cycles -- They Have
Them Too") for the first issue of Ms. magazine.
Her wit was rooted in statistics, scientific research and personal
experience with discrimination.
Born in Detroit as Stella Rosemary Rubin, she was raised in New York
City by her mother, a French immigrant who was illiterate but insisted
on education for her daughter. Dr. Ramey skipped several grades,
graduating from high school at age 15. Thanks to the virtually free
Brooklyn College, she graduated in 1937 and was immediately hired to
teach chemistry at Queens College. Teaching by day and studying by
night, she earned a master's degree in chemistry at Columbia University
in 1940.
She met her husband, James Ramey, a Columbia law student, at their
New York boarding house. They were married by the not-yet-famous
theologian Reinhold Niebuhr in his apartment.
In 1941, the couple moved to Knoxville, Tenn., where her husband
worked for the Tennessee Valley Authority. The chemistry department
chairman of the nearby University of Tennessee refused to hire her
because he thought she should be "home taking care of her husband." But
when the military draft of World War II thinned his faculty of men, he
asked her to teach Air Force cadets. No matter that she was pregnant --
Dr. Ramey took the job, at one-third the pay of her predecessor. Her
husband, she told the New York Times, "was absolutely determined that I
not falter in my career. . . . He didn't have to carry me piggyback
while he was climbing.''
After the war and a short period in Washington, her
husband got a job in Chicago at the Atomic Energy Commission. Dr. Ramey
earned her doctorate in physiology at the University of Chicago in 1950,
on the relationship of the nervous system to stress responses. She
taught for several years in the university's medical school until her
husband's career bought them back to Washington in 1956. Dr. Ramey
became a faculty member at Georgetown, where she worked until retiring
in 1987. She was a founder and the second president of the American
Women in Science.
In addition to her husband of 65
years, Dr. James T. Ramey of Bethesda, survivors
include two children, Drucilla Stender Ramey of New
York and Dr. James Ramey of Bethesda; and five
grandchildren. One granddaughter, Sara Ramey, is
writing a biography of Dr. Ramey.
Dr. Ramey's decades of endocrinology
research brought her recognition in the medical
world, but her facility with quips gave her a
national audience. Asked once by a sneering lawyer
if she preferred the title "chairperson," Dr. Ramey
responded, "I'd rather be a chairman. They make
more."
She traded ideas on helping abused women with an
Egyptian feminist at a White House tea. She was a
regular at the Renaissance Weekends made famous by
President Bill Clinton.
Dr. Ramey continued to investigate the impact of
stress hormones on males and females and blamed the
lack of related research on bias in the largely male
scientific establishment.
"I am appalled at the fact that men have not
studied the differences between males and females
for their own advantage,'' she said in the 1980s.
Such studies would help men as well as women and
society, she said, because women outlive men by
seven to nine years.
"Now, I like testosterone. Every home should have
some," she said. "But it becomes damaging as a man
gets older. I'm trying to help men live longer,
although I'm not sure all of them deserve it."
She told a convention of surgeons in 1989 that
the human heart, if receiving a normal supply of
blood and nutrition, has a life expectancy of 150
years and the brain 200 years. Researchers have
found ways to slow the aging process and revitalize
the body. Essential to the scenario, she said, is
getting the right chemical balance with nutrition,
vitamins and drugs.
"The goal is to die young at a late age. I'd say
120 years looks like a good goal," she said.
At the time of her death, Dr. Ramey was 89.
