Women’s Colleges

1. Women’s Colleges

2. The North • In the North, women’s colleges were an implicit threat to sex segregation in the workplace. • Had to earn a living before they got married • Teaching – ‘respectable’ way of support • Maternal instincts made women better teachers • Began teaching professional courses to teach women how to earn a living

3. The South • In the South, it was understood that graduates would not enter the work force. • Could uphold patriarchal society • Limited attendance of women by making seminary education costly • Create women’s colleges that enforced religious and regional values rather than have Southern women attend Northern colleges

4. Definition of a Women’s College • Women’s colleges are colleges that identify themselves as having an institutional mission primarily related to promoting and expanding educational opportunities for women. Most institutions of higher education currently have majority female enrollments; women’s colleges have predominantly female enrollments. (http://www.ed.gov/offices/OERI/PLLI/webreprt.html)

5. Opposition to Women’s Education • Could never prepare women with the same type of education as men • Women can not handle rigorous learning • Reduce marriages and families

6. Female Seminaries • Troy 1821 – Emma Willard • Hartford 1828 – Catherine Beecher • South Hadley 1836 – Mary Lyon • Female seminaries helped provide the inspiration for the woman’s college movement.

7. From Seminary to College • The fight for education • Conservatives – woman’s desire to stay home would be destroyed • Liberals – women would become better wives and mothers • Increased demand for high education • An increase in leisure time due to labor-saving home devices • Growth of common schools, need for more teachers • More literature for women encouraged women’s literary interests • Employment opportunities discovered because of Civil War

8. Goals of Women’s Colleges • Teacher training which developed public education • Religious and health education • Providing a woman "the best methods to perfect her intellect."

9. Georgia Female College • 90 women enrolled in first session • 1836, Charted • 1829, Opened • 1843, Name changed to Wesleyan Female College • 1845 , Phi Beta Kappa chapter established • 1917, the “Female” was eliminated from the title • 1993, designated historical landmark by the Georgia Conference Methodist Church

12. Catherine Beecher • “Those female institutions in our land which are assuming the ambitious name of colleges, have, not one of them, as yet, secured the real features which constitute the chief advantage of such institutions. They are merely high schools.” (Rudolph, p. 312, 1990) • 1852, American Women’s Education Association Formed • Direction and standards set for women’s colleges • 1850s launched a dozen women’s colleges

13. Elmira Female College • 1855, Dedicated and Opened • 1869, Became Co-educational • 1940, Phi Beta Kappa chapter established

14. Barnard College • 1889, Founded

15. Bryn Mawr College • 1885, Founded • 1893, No longer affiliated with The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)

16. Mount Holyoke College • 1837, Founded as Mount Holyoke Female Seminary • 1888, Became Mount Holyoke Seminary and College • 1893, Mount Holyoke College • 1905, Phi Beta Kappa chapter established

17. Radcliffe College • 1879, Harvard Annex • Women wanted access to a Harvard education • Created specifically for the private education of women by Harvard faculty • 1882, incorporated as the Society of Collegiate Instruction of Women • 1894, Charted as Radcliffe College • 1943, Joint instruction between Radcliffe and Harvard • Women could attend classes at Harvard

18. Radcliffe College continued • 1963, Radcliffe students received Harvard diplomas signed by the presidents of Radcliffe and Harvard • 1970, Joint commencement exercises begin • 1972, Co-residency begin • 1977, Women had nominal enrollment at Radcliffe but full enrollment at Harvard • 1999, Women were only enrolled at Harvard and Radcliffe College became Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study

19. Smith College • 1871, Established • 1875, Opened • 1904 , Phi Beta Kappa chapter established

20. Vassar College • 1861, Founded • 1899 , Phi Beta Kappa chapter established • 1969, Became co-educational after declining to join with Yale University

21. Wellesley College • 1870, Established Wellesley Female Seminary • 1873, Renamed Wellesley College • 1875, Opened • 1904 , Phi Beta Kappa chapter established

22. Sarah Lawrence College • 1926, Founded • 1966, Became co-educational

23. Mills College • 1852, Founded as the Young Ladies’ Seminary • 1866, Established as Mills College • 1885, Chartered • 1921, Graduate Degrees Introduced • 1929, Phi Beta Kappa chapter established

24. What Happened to the Students? • Jane Addams graduated from Rockford College in 1881 and opened the social settlement of Hull House in Chicago in 1889. She eventually became the President of the Woman’s International League for Peace, and in 1931 won a Nobel Peace Prize. • Sophonisba Breckinridge, a social worker and educator, received her B.S. from Wellesley College in 1881, and went on to earn both a law degree and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, where she later was a member of the faculty. She was a resident of Hull House in Chicago, and served as vice president of the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association and served as president of various social workers’ organizations. • Julia Lathrop spent two years studying at Rockford College before receiving her B.A. from Vassar College in 1880. She too was a resident of Hull House, and was involved in issues such as juvenile court laws and the care of the mentally disabled. She served as Chief of the Children’s Bureau at the U.S. Department of Labor. http://www.ed.gov/offices/OERI/PLLI/webreprt.html

25. “But neither co-ordinate education nor separate education would be the rule, for while both these movements would establish the right of women to higher education, and even prove in numerous ways that women could be educated to levels of understanding and brilliance equal to men, yet the characteristic institution for the higher education of women in the United States would be the coeducational college or the coeducational university.” (Rudolph, p. 320, 1990) The Co-educational Debate

26. What’s Wrong with Co-education? • Conservatives believed it would alter gender roles • A woman’s place was in the home • Women did not need anything more than academy or seminary training • Unhealthy for women • “Too much study drew blood away from the ovaries and to the brain, particularly if the female student overtaxed herself during menstruation.” –Edward Clarke

27. Going towards co-educational • Amherst: students would accept women but would miss the intimacy and the friendships of an all-man’s college • Cornell: women’s rights advocates wanted co-education because they thought it would form healthier relationships between the sexes and for marriages • University of Rochester: fought to co-educate for 30 years; agreed to accept females if a ‘dowry; was paid

28. The Good • Helped save men’s colleges • What Colleges Said… • Oberlin: elevated table manners and dinner conversation • Kansas: not a ‘whimper of scandal’ • Iowa: an ‘incitement to every virtue’ • Antioch: young men were more manly • Michigan: correlate co-education and marriage • Ohio State: ‘takes the simper out of young women and the roughness out of young men’

29. The Bad • Divided the subjects of curriculum • Useful, Full-blooded, Manly • Ornamental, Dilettantish, Feminine • Exclusion from extracurricular organizations and activities • Staff discouraged women away from particular fields of study • Female students existed more socially than intellectually • Segregation – female students sat in the back of classrooms