This volume presents new perspectives on the history of higher education for women in the United States. By introducing new voices and viewpoints into the literature on the history of higher education from the early nineteenth century through the 1970s, these essays address the meaning diverse groups of women have made of their education or their exclusion from education, and delve deeply into how those experiences were shaped by concepts of race, ethnicity, religion, national origin. Nash demonstrates how an examination of the history of women’s education can transform our understanding of educational institutions and processes more generally.

Women and Leadership in Higher Education is the first volume in a new series of books (Women and Leadership: Research, Theory, and Practice) that will be published in upcoming years to inform leadership scholars and practitioners. This book links theory, research, and practice of women’s leadership in various higher education contexts and offers suggestions for future leadership development strategies. This volume focuses on the field of higher education, particularly within the context of the United States—a sector that serves a majority of students at all degree levels who are women, yet lacks parity by women in senior leadership roles. The book’s fifteen chapters present both hard facts regarding the current demographic realities within higher education and fresh thinking about how progress can and must be made in order for U.S. higher education to benefit from the perspectives of women at the senior leadership table. The book’s opening section provides data and analysis in addressing “The State of Women and Leadership in Higher Education”; the second section offers descriptions of three effective models for women’s leadership development at the national and institutional levels; the third section draws from recent research to present “Women’s Experiences and Contributions in Higher Education Leadership.” The book concludes with five shorter chapters written by current and former college and university presidents who offer “Lessons from the Trenches” for the benefit of those who follow. In short, the thesis of the book is that our world is changing; higher education collectively, as well as institutions of all types, must change. Bringing more women into leadership is critical to the goal of moving our society and world forward in healthier ways.

The story of the American university in the past half century is about the rise of women in participation as students, faculty members, college athletes, and in subsequently changing the overall university culture for the better. Now almost sixty percent of the overall college student population in America is female, and still growing. By the year 2000, women surpassed men worldwide in attendance at higher education institutions. At the same time, after years of a disproportionate dominant male professoriate, female faculty members are now becoming the majority of university professors. While top university presidents are still largely male, women have achieved real gains in the overall administrative ranks and trustee positions. In all areas of the university disparities still exist in terms of compensation and balance in key areas of the academy, but the overall positive trend is clear. Few to this date have recognized and chronicled this extraordinary change in college education—one of society’s fundamental and influential institutions. For universities the test for the future is to make the changes needed in broad areas within higher education from financial aid to curriculum, student activities, and overall campus culture in order to better foster a newly empowered majority of women students.

While powerful gender inequalities remain in American society, women have made substantial gains and now largely surpass men in one crucial arena: education. Women now outperform men academically at all levels of school, and are more likely to obtain college degrees and enroll in graduate school. What accounts for this enormous reversal in the gender education gap? In The Rise of Women: The Growing Gender Gap in Education and What It Means for American Schools, Thomas DiPrete and Claudia Buchmann provide a detailed and accessible account of women’s educational advantage and suggest new strategies to improve schooling outcomes for both boys and girls. The Rise of Women opens with a masterful overview of the broader societal changes that accompanied the change in gender trends in higher education. The rise of egalitarian gender norms and a growing demand for college-educated workers allowed more women to enroll in colleges and universities nationwide. As this shift occurred, women quickly reversed the historical male advantage in education. By 2010, young women in their mid-twenties surpassed their male counterparts in earning college degrees by more than eight percentage points. The authors, however, reveal an important exception: While women have achieved parity in fields such as medicine and the law, they lag far behind men in engineering and physical science degrees. To explain these trends, The Rise of Women charts the performance of boys and girls over the course of their schooling. At each stage in the education process, they consider the gender-specific impact of factors such as families, schools, peers, race and class. Important differences emerge as early as kindergarten, where girls show higher levels of essential learning skills such as persistence and self-control. Girls also derive more intrinsic gratification from performing well on a day-to-day basis, a crucial advantage in the learning process. By contrast, boys must often navigate a conflict between their emerging masculine identity and a strong attachment to school. Families and peers play a crucial role at this juncture. The authors show the gender gap in educational attainment between children in the same families tends to be lower when the father is present and more highly educated. A strong academic climate, both among friends and at home, also tends to erode stereotypes that disconnect academic prowess and a healthy, masculine identity. Similarly, high schools with strong science curricula reduce the power of gender stereotypes concerning science and technology and encourage girls to major in scientific fields. As the value of a highly skilled workforce continues to grow, The Rise of Women argues that understanding the source and extent of the gender gap in higher education is essential to improving our schools and the economy. With its rigorous data and clear recommendations, this volume illuminates new ground for future education policies and research.

Women's colleges have had a long and prestigious role in the education of American women. This volume offers insights into the continuing significant role of women's colleges in higher education. It provides a brief history of women's colleges in the U.S. in the context of social and legislative issues that have affected the country, examines how women's colleges have managed to survive in an era of coeducational institutions and equal opportunities in education, and identifies the unique features of women's colleges that make them attractive to young women. Charts and tables. Extensive bibliography.

This edited collection illustrates the way in which women’s experiences of academe could be both contextually diverse but historically and culturally similar. It looks at both the micro (individual women and universities) and macro-level (comparative analyses among regions and countries) within regional, national, trans-national, and international contexts. The contributors integrally advance knowledge about the university in history by exploring the intersections of the lived experiences of women students and professors, practices of co-education, and intellectual and academic cultures. They also raise important questions about the complementary and multidirectional flow and exchange of academic knowledge and information among gender groups across programmes, disciplines, and universities. Historical inquiry and interpretation serve as efficacious ways with which to understand contemporary events and discourses in higher education, and more broadly in community and society. This book will provide important historical contexts for current debates about the numerical dominance and significance of women in higher education, and the tensions embedded in the gendering of specific academic programs and disciplines, and university policies, missions, and mandates.

Encyclopedic review about gender and its impact on American higher education across historical and cultural contexts. The contributors describe the ways in which gender is embedded in the educational practices, curriculum, institutional structures and governance of colleges and universities. Topics included are: institutional diversity; academic majors and programs; extracurricular organizations such as sororities, fraternities and women's centers; affirmative action and other higher educational policies; and theories that have been used to analyze and explain the ways in which gender in academe is constructed.

This open access book offers pioneering insights and practical methods for promoting diversity and inclusion in higher education classrooms and curricula. It highlights the growing importance of international education programs in Asia and the value of understanding student diversity in a changing, evermore interconnected world. The book explores diversity across physical, psychological and cogitative traits, socio-economic backgrounds, value systems, traditions and emerging identities, as well as diverse expectations around teaching, grading, and assessment. Chapters detail significant trends in active learning pedagogy, writing programs, language acquisition, and implications for teaching in the liberal arts, adult learners, girls and women, and Confucian heritage communities. A quality, relevant, 21st Century education should address multifaceted and intersecting forms of diversity to equip students for deep life-long learning inside and outside the classroom. This timely volume provides a unique toolkit for educators, policy-makers, and professional development experts.

This book assists aspiring and current women leaders on how to advance into higher education leadership roles. Drawn from research and the lived experiences of women and non-binary people in higher education leadership, this book serves as a guide in understanding the gender disparity in higher education leadership and how women leaders forge pathways to promotion and success through systemic barriers, obstacles, and a lack of representation. A critical review of traditional leadership theory offers an opportunity to reimagine how effective leadership is framed and valued in higher education. Chapter authors and case studies explore the intersections of multiple identities and their impacts on leadership through lenses, including institutional type, functional areas, ability, gender identity, sexuality, race, and ethnicity. Focusing on a bridge from theory to practice that is designed to empower and inspire women leaders at all levels of the spectrum, this book is ideal reading for higher education scholars, students, and faculty aspiring to become leaders.

A groundbreaking history of how elite colleges and universities in America and Britain finally went coed As the tumultuous decade of the 1960s ended, a number of very traditional, very conservative, highly prestigious colleges and universities in the United States and the United Kingdom decided to go coed, seemingly all at once, in a remarkably brief span of time. Coeducation met with fierce resistance. As one alumnus put it in a letter to his alma mater, "Keep the damned women out." Focusing on the complexities of institutional decision making, this book tells the story of this momentous era in higher education—revealing how coeducation was achieved not by organized efforts of women activists, but through strategic decisions made by powerful men. In America, Ivy League schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Dartmouth began to admit women; in Britain, several of the men's colleges at Cambridge and Oxford did the same. What prompted such fundamental change? How was coeducation accomplished in the face of such strong opposition? How well was it implemented? Nancy Weiss Malkiel explains that elite institutions embarked on coeducation not as a moral imperative but as a self-interested means of maintaining a first-rate applicant pool. She explores the challenges of planning for the academic and non-academic lives of newly admitted women, and shows how, with the exception of Mary Ingraham Bunting at Radcliffe, every decision maker leading the charge for coeducation was male. Drawing on unprecedented archival research, “Keep the Damned Women Out” is a breathtaking work of scholarship that is certain to be the definitive book on the subject.