The Lame Defense of Women's Colleges
-
- |
-
- |
- |
- 15
A guest post from law student and former Slate intern Morgan Smith:
This Forbes article, which recently whipped through my Facebook feed, is the latest iteration of the lame defense that is often marshaled on behalf of women’s colleges. The lead character in these articles is familiar. She was a timid smart girl fearful of speaking up in high school, ridiculed by classmates as a lesbian or feminist for her choice of all-female higher education. Then she is transformed by the powers of the single-sex classroom into a poised, successful adult.
The problem is that this defense is actually derisive. It implies that only outside of a coeducational classroom can women trade timidity and lip-gloss for assertiveness and a scholar’s pilled cardigan. The notion that having men around distracts women from academic pursuits and that professors at coed institutions don’t take women seriously is not only dated, but patronizing. If women’s colleges want to survive the 21st century, they need to stop being defensive and reflexively attacking the inadequacies of coeducation. Otherwise, they’ll fulfill the prophecy they seek to avoid—they will become irrelevant to women’s education.
The traditional argument for women’s colleges used to seem airtight. It comes from a series of studies physiologist M. Elizabeth Tidball started in the 1960s. Her seminal 1973 study, which used the Who’s Who in American Women registry and the Doctorate Records Files as indicators of career success, determined that women’s colleges graduated two to three times as many high-achieving women than did coeducational institutions. Her findings were well-timed. A year after the passage of Title IX, they helped buoy flagging support for women’s-only higher education.
But subsequent studies have challenged the Tidball research. One, conducted in 1991, identified a possible methodological flaw in her work. This second study, which the Journal of Higher Education published (subscription required), indicated that if she redid her research while controlling for students’ socioeconomic backgrounds, before they went to college, there would be little difference in career achievement between female graduates of women’s colleges, which had more daughters of well-heeled families, and coed colleges, which had fewer. Tidball hotly disputed this, and the authors were careful to say that they hadn’t fully disproved her findings. But they called for more investigation. And in the decades since then, researchers have completed a few studies that accounted for students’ backgrounds, and confirmed Tidball’s achievement gap putting women’s colleges ahead of coed ones—but to a much smaller degree than she found.
And you know, that’s OK, from the women’s college point of view. The long-term viability of single-sex ed depends upon these schools reimagining themselves first as fine academic institutions and second as colleges for women. I graduated from Wellesley in 2007, and there’s no place I would have rather have studied, as an English major, Charlotte Bronte’s deep and highly personal examination of female depression in Villette. But that’s not because I wouldn’t have been taken seriously if there were men in my classes. It’s because of Wellesley’s excellent professors and dedicated students. That’s why I can’t stand to hear women’s colleges justified by the faults of coed classrooms, or the wage gap, or their ability to churn out Secretaries of State.
Emily Bazelon is a founding editor of Double X, and a writer and editor at Slate.
Comments
We all want who is sale Louis
By: Replica | Sat, 09/26/2009 - 23:56
We all want who is sale Louis Vuitton Replica because all the popular louis vuitton stores purses offer them to have the most superior in design at costs that make it a reality. I did some searching and most of louis vuitton discount go for no more than $1 000! They are very cheap louis vuitton outlet We all like louis vittion web site Let’s go to buy Louis Vuitton Replica
مترجم انجليزي عربي برامج
By: beckham_250 | Sat, 09/19/2009 - 20:04
مترجم انجليزي عربي
برامج n73
مترجم
مترجم عربي انجليزي
ترجمة
تنزيل ماسنجر
تنزيل ماسنجر بلس
تحميل ماسنجر بلس
برامج كمبيوتر
برامج نوكيا
برامج مجانية
برنامج محول الصوتيات
برنامج لفتح المواقع المحجوبة
برنامج الفوتوشوب
برنامج الماسنجر
برنامج فلاش
رسائل عيد ميلاد
نغمات اسلامية
برنامج فتح المواقع المحجوبة
برنامج لفتح المواقع
برنامج لاستعادة الملفات المحذوفة
برنامج لفتح اكثر من ماسنجر
برنامج تسريع التحميل
برنامج تورنت
تحميل ثيمات n73
تحميل ثيمات n70
تحميل ثيمات n95
تحميل ثيمات جوال n73
تحميل ثيمات
تحميل ثيمات نوكيا
رسائل رومانسية
برنامج تقطيع الاغاني
برامج n95
برامج n70
برامج نوكيا n95
محول صوتيات
لفتح المواقع المحجوبة
hotspot shield
رسائل حب
تعليم الفوتوشوب
تحميل برنامج الفوتوشوب
مسجات عتاب
مسجات عيد ميلاد
برامج نوكيا n73
ثيمات n70
فتح المواقع المحجوبة
برامج الجوال
ثيمات الجوال
ثيمات نوكيا
ثيمات نوكيا n95
ثيمات نوكيا n73
تحميل ثيمات الجوال
نغمات الجوال
نغمات الجوال اسلامية
نغمات نوكيا
تحميل برامج فوتوشوب
تحميل ماسنجر
تحميل برامج كمبيوتر
تحميل ثيمات
يوتوب
نغمات رومانسية
تحميل الفوتوفلتر
autodesk maya 2010
antirap برنامج
anti rap برنامج
برنامج تحويل الصوتيات
تحويل الصوتيات
برنامج تحويل الصوتيات الى mp3
برنامج تحويل صوتيات
برنامج خاشع
برامج تحويل الصوت
برامج الجيل الخامس
mp3 sound cutter
mp3 cutter
تنزيل ماسنجر
hotspot shield launch
msn 2009
msn 2009 download
messenger 2009
Women's Colleges aren't for everyone
By: odat62490 | Wed, 09/16/2009 - 09:27
I attended a Catholic women's college -- a long time ago ('89), and as I look back on my life, it was just part of my journey. That said, I was a little young for college (17 years old as a freshman) and that supportive atmosphere was much needed.
Somewhat off-topic: attending a Catholic college opened my eyes to anti-Catholic bigotry and casual sexism. A lot of guys I met at off-campus parties used to smirk at me and say, "Oh, its an all-girls Catholic school." Now THAT's derisive. I learned to handle it (I think).
I never agreed that women who attended women's colleges had or have a "leg up" in the world post-graduation.
The elation of graduation day is the same for everyone everywhere graduating from college!
missing the point
By: LS | Mon, 09/14/2009 - 11:50
True, the best way for women's colleges to benefit women is to provide a quaility education. But women's colleges still can and do benefit some of their students by only admitting women. Seeing all of the student leadership positions and a lot of the faculty positions filled by women is empowering for some students, especially those coming from homes or communities where women don't lead much. And there are plenty of those communities out there. Professors or teachers treating male and female students differently is also still a real phenomenon, even in cases where it's more subtle and unconscious on the teacher's part. The point isn't that "_only_ outside of a coeducational classroom can women trade timidity and lip-gloss for assertiveness and a scholar’s pilled cardigan." The point is that an all (or, often, 99%) female environment can help some women do this.
Only one argument for men's only education.
By: Kapt Z | Sun, 09/13/2009 - 19:16
No 'distractions'.
Problem is the 'distractions' make life worth living.
Men's colleges
By: asha | Sun, 09/13/2009 - 13:18
Does anyone know what the arguments are for men's colleges? A few non-religious men's colleges still exist.
The argument that women's
By: Tari | Sun, 09/13/2009 - 12:17
The argument that women's colleges are somehow "more welcoming" is also not always true. College is still college: social hierarchies will form, classrooms will be competitive, and people will feel snubbed/excluded. The utopian idea that a women's college will cohere into a mutually-supportive environment simply because it contains only women is built around the idea that women should find common ground on the basis of their gender---and that this identification should override all their other individual differences. That logic is at some level essentializing, and if it were applied to an all-male environment, it would risk being called patriarchal or exclusionary.
Women's colleges can be wonderful. I went to one. I had a fantastic experience there, but it had little to do with the fact that all my classmates were female. It was simply a very good school. As a few previous commentators have suggested, women's colleges should not see or sell themselves as second-wave feminist havens where young, timid women are taught to "find their voices." That's not always true, and focusing on it risks downplaying the other strengths of these schools.
They're worth it.
By: GrrArgGirl | Sun, 09/13/2009 - 04:49
I'm currently a sophomore at an all women's college. What sold me on the same sex education was - as the many students that I met on my tours told me - that you CAN take classes with men (and indeed several are in my classes) and that at the end of the day you come back to a women's community. Women's colleges cultivate a special kind of culture both in and out of the classroom so that not only do we live in a community but we learn in one. That camaraderie in the classroom is what makes women's colleges so academically effective.
Don't really agree either
By: PLS | Sat, 09/12/2009 - 17:11
I also went to Wellesley ('06) and I second Asha's arguments that many young girls could still benefit from the confidence boosts that women's colleges could provide. But aside from that I think that the post here fails to recognize that Wellesley (I won't comment on other women's colleges) has such great academics in part because it is a women's college. I'm not an expert on the psychology behind it but my general experience is that young women are more mature and more hard working than young men. There are many great co-ed schools but few have an environment of determined pursuit of excellence like Wellesley does. I think that's because the group of students is so great and the professors teach to a higher level. There are few slackers to bring down the quality of the classes as has happened at other educational institutions I have attended. The students work hard out of their own drive and love of learning and we all benefit from being around other young women that are so smart.
I went to a co-ed school and
By: Ramsub | Fri, 09/11/2009 - 18:16
I went to a co-ed school and am attending a co-ed college in India. I can see how a same sex school would make a difference over here.
I was very timid when I was in school, but that changed when I went to college (got a nice support group in my female friends), now I am very outspoken (especially about "feminism").
I wish I could speak up in class, make a point, without the entire (almost) male population of the class (and some girls) rolling their eyes (they've kinda given up on me, and they know they won't find too many of me to bother them later on in life). I also know that more girls would venture their opinions/take part in discussions if there weren't guys in our class.
Eventually we have to learn to deal with guys.... but if we were in a single sex classroom at least we (girls) would be thinking and talking (instead of staying mum) and maybe that would carry on even after we left the class