Hollins Digital Commons

The following is a collection of papers related to the Hopkins v. Price Waterhouse and the Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins court cases, a seven-year battle against Hopkins’ employer for gender discrimination. Her final victory in 1990 helped to expand workplace discrimination laws to include gender stereotyping. The collection date ranges from 1967-2000 and includes numerous newspaper and periodical articles that document the journey from beginning to end, court transcripts, personal and professional correspondence, materials related to her book So Ordered: Making Partner the Hard Way, a scrapbook album, and other papers. In addition, Hopkins’ personal correspondence (1965-1989) with a former Hollins professor is located in a separate collection: Julia Randall Papers.

Ann Branigar Hopkins was born in December 18, 1943 in Galveston, Texas to Tela Maurine Chiles and William Hopkins. Her father was a career Army officer while her mother worked as a nurse. She attended Hollins College (now University), 1961-1965, receiving her B. A. in Mathematics and an award for Outstanding Achievement in Mathematics. She earned her M.S. in Mathematics at Indiana University (Bloomington) in 1967. In 1974 she married Thomas Peter Gallagher, Jr. and had three children: Tela Margaret Gallagher, Thomas Gilbert Gallagher, and Thomas Peter Gallagher.

Her first job was as a mathematics instructor at Hollins for the 1967-1968 academic year, filling in for a professor on sabbatical. From Hollins, she moved on to IBM and several other corporations before obtaining a position at Price Waterhouse. While at Price Waterhouse, Ms. Hopkins became a candidate for partnership in 1982. In 1983 she learned that she had not been selected, despite past favorable evaluations. Upon discovering she was passed over for several men who had not brought in as much business as she had, Hopkins decided to sue Price Waterhouse for sex discrimination. Consequently she experienced retaliation and harassment by firm officials, who eventually terminated her employment on January 17, 1984.

Her journey took her through the Washington D.C. Federal District Court, the Washington, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court. There were five separate court cases from 1985-1990. In the meantime, she found employment at the Department of State, as a consultant (1984-1988), and the World Bank in 1988. By May 1990, the courts determined that Hopkins had been discriminated against and should be reinstated at Price Waterhouse as a partner. Price Waterhouse was also instructed to give Hopkins $379,000 in back pay. On February 18, 1991, she was finally able to return to Price Waterhouse.

Hopkins’ story was published as part of a larger book in A Few Good Women by Jane White (published by Prentice Hall in 1992) and she also received invitations for speaking engagements and interviews. Although Hopkins didn’t consider herself a “leading edge person” or a role model, she became one to many women across the country.

At the suggestion of others, Hopkins decided to write her own book. She began work on a manuscript, documenting her journey through the court system. The end result was So Ordered: Making Partner the Hard Way, published by the University of Massachusetts Press, in 1996.

After returning to her job at Price Waterhouse in early 1991, she worked more than a decade for Price Waterhouse (now Price Waterhouse Cooper) before retiring in 2002. Hopkins lived in Washington, D.C. for most of her life until her death on June 23, 2018.