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Reviewed by:
  • Working-Class Students at Radcliffe College, 1940–1970: The Intersection of Gender, Social Class, and Historical Contexts
  • Carrie A. Kortegast and Florence A. Hamrick
Jennifer O’Connor Duffy. Working-Class Students at Radcliffe College, 1940–1970: The Intersection of Gender, Social Class, and Historical Contexts. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen. 2008. 205 pp. Cloth: $109.95. ISBN-13: 978-0773450981.

In Working-Class Students at Radcliffe College, 1940–1970: The Intersection of Gender, Social Class, and Historical Contexts, Jennifer O’Connor Duffy combines a rich historical narrative with secondary statistical analyses to portray the experiences of working-class students and alumnae from one elite women’s college during the middle decades of the twentieth century. This study contributes to a small but growing body of historical scholarship on college women from working-class families, and findings from this study also document longer-term impacts of college on the subsequent lives and careers of these particular Radcliffe women (“Cliffies”).

O’Connor Duffy analyzed data from the Radcliffe College Centennial Survey, a cross-sectional survey of alumnae conducted in 1977 by the college, narrowing her focus to alumnae representing the four decades immediately preceding the survey. These records provided perhaps the only preexisting dataset that allowed for disaggregation by such characteristics as social class background and alumnae cohort membership by decade. For the most part, the analyses compared alumnae from working-class and other class backgrounds. Drawing on archival sources, she complemented the statistical analyses with a contextualizing narrative of key social, political, and cultural developments—at Radcliffe College, within higher education, and within the United States—extending from the targeted decades through more recent years.

Karen Arnold’s compelling foreword endorsed this study’s attention to intersections among gender, social class, elite women’s colleges, and historical contexts. Otherwise, the format of the book adheres closely to the traditional doctoral dissertation format.

Chapter 1 provides an overview and introduction. The review of literature in Chapter 2 addresses social class and reviews feminist perspectives relevant to O’Connor Duffy’s work. Additional topics included: the relative absence of students’ social class backgrounds from much higher education research, higher education as vehicles of social mobility and social reproduction, and trends in educational opportunities for women at Radcliffe College and higher education in general.

Chapter 3 presents the research design and methods. Chapters 4 and 5 contain, respectively, [End Page 422] findings and discussion of the significance of those findings. These were the book’s more compelling and interesting chapters.

O’Connor Duffy documented the declines in women’s college enrollment (from 47% in the 1920s to 30% in the 1950s), preceding subsequent increases in proportions of women college students. She also charted the evolution of financial aid policies and class consciousness at Radcliffe College and discussed contemporary social movements.

Two of the key findings were associated with advising services at the college and careers at midlife. Among working-class alumnae, higher satisfaction levels with college were associated— significantly and solely—with higher satisfaction levels with the college’s advising system; an association between advising and college satisfaction was not evident among nonworking-class alumnae.

O’Connor Duffy speculated that, for working-class students, college advisors and services may have been an important source of information “about the necessary steps towards achieving upward mobility including information about internships, career paths, and graduate schools” (p. 150). For nonworking-class students, family members and social contacts rather than college advisors may have been the principal sources for this knowledge and cultural capital.

With respect to upward mobility, O’Connor Duffy found that occupational status (seven levels of categorization ranging from unskilled workers to executives of large organizations and major professionals) of working-class and nonworking-class alumnae was virtually indistinguishable by midcareer. From her analyses, she concluded that working-class women “continued to appreciate Radcliffe more as a gateway to mobility as opposed to class maintenance” (p. 146).

As these two findings show, the study also documents potential college impacts (e.g., via advising services) and, in this case, longer-term impacts specifically among alumnae of an elite college. Comparative analyses among decade cohorts who, in the aggregate, represented life and career stages spanning four...

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