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1 From Whence They Came The Contexts, Challenges, and Courage of Early Women Administrators in Higher Education Jana Nidiffer It is likely that most people are familiar with the old adage that dooms a society that ignores its history to subsequently repeat it. Although this adage is quite hackneyed, it nevertheless holds an element of truth. So I have rephrased it, conveying what for me is its essence. My version states: “From history we gain insight, and from insight we have a chance at wisdom for the future.” It is in this spirit that I offer a chapter on the contexts, challenges, and courage of early women administrators in higher education. This chapter begins with a review of women’s opportunities for participation in higher education over the past two centuries. It then turns specifically to the opportunities and actions of early women administrators. Finally, it urges readers to insist on structures that support the experiences of women who participate in higher education at all levels. TOUGH AS ROOTS—BARRIERS TO WOMEN’S EDUCATION Over time, higher education has become a national stage on which social attitudes about women and gender are dramatized. Although a full history of women’s education is beyond the scope of this chapter (see Gordon, 1990; McCandless, 1999; Nidiffer, 2001b; Rosenberg, 1982; Solomon, 1985), a review of the various arguments opposing women’s education places the work of female administrators in perspective.This history also illustrates the strategies and struggles of some of the first change agents for women’s participation in higher education. 15 At the time of the American Revolution, a powerful barrier to white women’s higher education was based on Anglo-Saxon tradition. In fact, the cornerstone of resistance was the very Judeo-Christian heritage on which the country was founded. Laws and social practices were informed by the panProtestantism of the era that proclaimed a divinely ordained world order. God’s plan called for women to be subservient and generally confined to the domestic sphere of life, while men were part of the political, economic, and social spheres of their communities (Rosenberg, 1982). The “cult of true womanhood ” demanded piety, obedience, purity, and domesticity, and dictated life for many middle-class white women (Welter, 1976). Thus, it was impractical to educate women. If the colonial colleges chiefly prepared young men to enter the ministry, politics, or academic life, the idea of women attending college was absurd. They could never be ministers, politicians, statesmen, or farmers. Not only would college serve no useful purpose for a woman, but common wisdom also dictated that she lacked the intellectual capacity to handle the rigors of the classical curriculum. In the antebellum era, the dominant curriculum consisted of classical studies with an emphasis on language study, literature, and philosophy as the pinnacle (Rudolph, 1962). Much of the new science was relegated to the margins of established colleges such as Harvard and Yale. Ironically , early women’s academies tended to emphasize science (Shmurak & Handler, 1992;Tolley, 1996). Another accommodation to women’s perceived intellectual inferiority was offering higher education limited to the “finishing arts” or the “Ladies Course” provided at Oberlin College (Solomon, 1985). Both curricula were less rigorous than the curriculum offered to men and emphasized women’s likely domestic role. By the middle of the nineteenth century, a new justification for limiting women’s education entered the national discourse. Science, specifically biology, was used to justify the differences between the genders. It was commonly assumed that the body was a closed biological system in which the expenditure of energy in one part necessarily deprived another part. It was further believed that the conclusions of Charles Darwin could be applied to the full range of human activities—that “specialization of function” was critical to both social and biological evolution (Rosenberg, 1982).Therefore, a biologically based justification for limiting women’s education and therefore her encroachment into previously male roles emerged from the medical community. In 1873, a former member of the Harvard Medical School faculty, Dr. Edward H. Clarke, published his views on women’s education in a small book entitled Sex in Education; or, a Fair Chance for the Girls. Clarke believed that biology was destiny, women’s brains were less developed than men, and women could not tolerate intense levels of mental stimulation. More importantly, Clarke linked concentrated brain activity with the potential malfunction of the reproductive “apparatus,” especially if women were overtaxed during the “catamenial function” (menstruation) (p. 48). Clarke feared...

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