Most College Students Are Women: Implications for Teaching, Learning and Policy (review)

As a doctoral student in adult, higher, and community education, I need both knowledge from my field and skills that will enable me to share that knowledge. I was particularly interested in whether or not this work would be a good intersection of ideas in both education and women’s studies, and I was excited that it addresses the changing gender composition of the undergraduate classroom. My excitement was not misplaced.

The foreword provides a mini-history lesson about gender in higher education from David Sadker. He and his late wife experienced gender discrimination firsthand in the 1960s and spent the rest of their careers researching the issue. It was an informal and informative introduction to the topic at hand. At a time when women make up the majority of students on most college campuses, this book offers suggestions for using the practices of feminist pedagogy to help all teachers, male and female, to connect with their students in all their diversity. Written by educators from a variety of fields, with applications that many practitioners will find useful, the articles examine how specific disciplines continue to deter women’s success despite their growing enrollment in universities. Barriers to the success of women students are particularly evident in quantitative and scientific fields, and several of the articles offer practical remedies to benefit all students.

The contributors explore several problems that arise at the intersection of race and gender, and they offer some transformative approaches. Articles in the volume consider the impact of the campus environment—such as the rise of binge drinking, sexual assault, and homophobic behaviors—on women students’ progress, and suggest means for improving the peer culture for all students. While often discussed in the field of women’s studies, issues that students deal with outside the classroom also have important links to other disciplines. Recognizing this can lead educators to previously unrecognized learning opportunities.

There is also analysis of the sorts of self-knowledge made possible through reflective writing and gendered patterns of relating to knowledge production and acquisition. In “Learning Partnerships,” Baxter Magolda provides reflective methods for educators to try, showing how understanding the evolution of self-authorship and learning can help students be successful in college and adult life. She also offers means of assessment and tangible examples of successful innovative practice to help educators with these new educational practices. Magolda’s use of real-life stories from participants’ interviews makes her theories relatable to any practitioner or student. Identifying with actual learning experiences can help educators see how the theories can inform their real-life situations.

The contributors to this book provide new insights into the learning dynamics in today’s higher education classroom, benefiting not only new educators like myself but also those who need an introduction to progressive pedagogies. Moreover, the book’s overarching argument is that feminist pedagogy can help teachers engage all students and encourage them to excel. Civic education and service learning, for example, are hot topics in U.S. higher education today. As Rebecca Ropers-Huilman and Betsy Palmer show in their article, “Feminist and Civic Education,” the call to activism has always been a part of feminism and women’s studies. They offer interesting suggestions for embracing the idea of community and emphasizing learning about diversity that educators can implement in their classrooms, regardless of the field or discipline.

Educators may pick up this work, looking for a better understanding of their female students, and come away with new knowledge about feminist education as a whole. Those who shy away from the term “feminism” may have difficulty incorporating these ideas in their own classrooms because of the terminology, but they also might recognize things they already do and realize they are practicing feminism without even knowing it.

The collection concludes with Susan Bracken’s auto-narrative analysis of teaching women’s studies to undergraduates, which I found particularly appealing because...