Author: Dr. Estelle Ramey

Estelle Rosemary Ramey (1917-2006) was an American endocrinologist, physiologist and feminist who became internationally known for refuting surgeon and Democratic Party leader Edgar Berman, who stated that women were unfit to hold high public office because of "raging hormonal imbalances." Her original bio for this piece read: "Dr. Ramey is a professor of physiology and biophysics at Georgetown University Medical School. She belongs to the 2 percent of full professors at American medical schools who are women."

From the Vault: Men’s Cycles—They Have Them Too, You Know (1972)

Dr. Estelle Ramey and Jessica Ramey Stender

In 1970, Dr. Edgar Berman dismissed the assertion that a woman could be president, by referencing women’s “raging storms of monthly hormonal imbalances.” The woman who subsequently held him to account was Dr. Estelle Ramey—my grandmother.

“Women’s chains have been forged by men, not by anatomy,” Ramey wrote in the first issue of Ms. in 1972.

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