Sheila Tobias
Sheila Tobias (April 26, 1935–July 6, 2021) was an American feminist scholar, author, and academic administrator. Born in Brooklyn, New York, she graduated from Radcliffe College before earning master's degrees in history from Columbia University. After lecturing at the City College of New York and serving at Cornell University, she was appointed associate provost at Wesleyan University in 1970, where her primary administrative focus was guiding the formerly all-male institution through its transition to coeducation. Her scholarship focused extensively on gender gaps in higher education, leading her to define and popularize the concept of "math anxiety" in a landmark 1976 article for Ms. magazine. This research was expanded into her definitive, best-selling book, Overcoming Math Anxiety (1978), which established that math avoidance among female students was a socialized and structural barrier rather than an intellectual deficiency. She went on to publish more than ten volumes investigating academic anxieties and systemic disparities, including They're Not Dumb, They're Different (1990) and Faces of Feminism (1997). Her later career was spent in Tucson, Arizona, working as an independent educational consultant and curriculum designer for institutions such as the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
In the newsletter
- No. 8 Summer 1996