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1. Introduction Coeducation: An Uneven Progression
- Vanderbilt University Press
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3 1 Introduction Coeducation: An Uneven Progression Leslie Miller-Bernal Coeducation must now take up the task of exploring the innovations necessary . . . to fulfill the promise of true educational equity for men and women. —Carol Lasser Coeducation in the United States today is almost universal. Less than forty years ago, however, some of the most prestigious colleges and universities, including Princeton, Yale, Amherst, and Williams, were for men only. Then, in a rather short period of time, the push of women for access to all colleges, begun in the nineteenth century, succeeded in virtually every instance.1 This chapter provides a brief overview of the history of coeducation in the United States, focusing particularly on the recent period of men’s institutions’ transition to coeducation.2 The case studies of formerly men’s colleges presented in this book describe how different institutions became coeducational during the latter part of the twentieth century and explore the experiences of women during and after the transition. This chapter discusses the broader cultural context within which such major institutional changes occurred. Coeducation’s Beginnings The distinction of the first coeducational college belongs to Oberlin, which opened its doors to women and black Americans in 1833.3 At the time women’s opportunities for higher education were extremely limited, and blacks of either sex had virtually no opportunity for higher education.4 The great age of colleges for women had not yet begun, as almost all originated after the Civil War, the opening of Vassar College in 1865 being the most noteworthy.5 Some scholars CoingCoedFinalPages.indd 3 5/26/04 4:53:11 PM 4 The History of Coeducation stress the inequitable treatment of women at Oberlin in terms of college regulations , the course of study that most women followed, the religiously mandated subservience to the men students, and the gendered division of required manual labor; nonetheless, a college that admitted both women and men, blacks and whites, was revolutionary.6 A few colleges in the Midwest followed Oberlin’s coeducational example, with Antioch perhaps being the most notable for having women on its faculty.7 Most colleges that opened right after the Civil War were single-sex, however. Before 1870, only one out of every six women pursuing higher education studied at a coeducational college, excluding normal schools that trained teachers.8 Many people believed that women were mentally and physically unfit for higher education; at the very least, they thought that the form and content of college education needed to be adapted to women’s physiology, something that was easier to accomplish in women’s colleges. Retired Harvard doctor and professor Edward H. Clarke was one of the most famous and forceful proponents of such views. His book, Sex in Education; or a Fair Chance for the Girls (1873), was reprinted many times and had a widespread influence, leading even an ambitious woman like M. Carey Thomas, future president of Bryn Mawr College, to worry that she would harm herself if she pursued collegiate work.9 Despite such ideological opposition, women continued to make inroads into higher education. Their success was due in part to social, economic, and political developments. During the Civil War, some men’s colleges, such as the University of Wisconsin, turned to women to fill empty spaces in their classrooms.10 More women than men were graduating from the burgeoning public school system, which prepared women for collegiate work and made them available to train to become schoolteachers. Women were acceptable, even desirable, as teachers because teaching was seen as a natural extension of women’s maternal nature, and women could be paid considerably lower salaries than men.11 Ideological opposition to women’s higher education lessened, too, as various studies demonstrated that college-educated women were as healthy as other women.12 The nineteenth-century women’s movement made education one of its major planks. The first women’s rights convention held in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, for example, called for women’s “thorough education” so that they could take their rightful place in teaching, not only youth but also students of “theology, medicine, or law.”13 Almost all women’s rights advocates favored coeducation over single-sex education because they believed that women’s colleges provided inferior education.14 Groups of women petitioned many men’s colleges and universities for entry, or sometimes for lesser privileges such as the opportunity to take their exams, as women did at Harvard, Columbia...