She was the rare woman in her field, and a tenured professor. But when a sexist colleague was promoted, she quit, forcing a reckoning in her profession.
Dr. Frances Conley made national headlines in 1991 when she resigned from her position at Stanford University School of Medicine, saying that sexism had made her job untenable.
At the time, she was a tenured professor and one of the country’s only female neurosurgeons. For decades, she had played along as male colleagues fondled her neck, ran their hands up her legs and called her “hon” in the operating room. One offender made a habit of asking her to go to bed with him, thrusting his pelvis forward as he did so.
She had learned to banter with the worst of them — she felt it was the cost of success in a male-dominated field — but when a particularly egregious colleague was promoted to department head, she’d had enough. She was 50 years old, and, she said, she could not pretend “to be one of the boys any longer.”
“I was tired of having my honest differences of opinion put down as a manifestation of premenstrual syndrome,” she wrote in an opinion piece announcing her decision, published in several places, “of having my ideas treated less seriously than those of the men with whom I work. I wanted my dignity back.”
Dr. Conley specialized in spinal surgeries and carotid artery blockages; her research focused on the immunology of brain tumors. Yet her greatest impact on medicine was her diagnosis of sexism at the institution she loved, which caused a reckoning across the country.
Dr. Conley died on Aug. 5 at her home in Sea Ranch, Calif., in Sonoma County. She was 83.
Her death was announced by Stanford in late September. Her nephew Ron Sann said the cause was complications of dementia.