Timeline of women's colleges in the United States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_women%27s_colleges_in_the_United_States#First_and_oldest
While many women did receive higher education in the past (a tiny proportion compared to today), it was in a far different environment (especially for Catholics) than today.
It was often a very strict and regulated environment.
Even so, the damage caused by higher education on women was noticed a long time ago:
Earliest among the manifestations of this move-
ment was the demand for higher education for
women, a demand which was speedily met. To-day
the college education of women is so abundantly sup-
plied that In 1911-12 72,703 women were in col-
leges in the United States. College training has be-
come not merely respectable but fashionable. Little
trace remains of opposition to college training on the
ground that it is unwomanly. In twenty years the
number of women at college has more than trebled.
This feminine corps of more-or-less Intellectuals has
increased from 20,874 In 1889-90 to 72,703 in
1911-12, a rate of growth double as fast as the
men students' rate of growth.
It is in the circles from which college women come
that the woman's movement has been most pro-
nounced, for Feminism as a cult touches the less In-
tellectual levels of society but lightly. All that is In-
volved in the claims of Feminism, the liberation of
women by making their lives and work approximate
to the lives and work of men, has been attained more
by college graduates than by any other set of women. |
Their lives have been directed consciously according
to the gospel of the woman's movement more than
the lives of their wage-earning sisters in factories
and stores. They have enjoyed that free choice be-
tween domestic and business careers, following upon
the best training and preparation that society af
forded, that free choice which Feminism hopes to
offer to every woman.
When the higher education of women was in dis-
pute its advocates derided the idea that the mother-
hood of women could be prejudicially affected in the
slightest degree by college education. They argued
that maternal instincts were too deep seated and the
joys of motherhood were too much desired to be
modified by any changes of training or environment. [
What are the facts ? When they are quoted they
are usually challenged. Therefore I have taken
them exclusively from the statistical publication of
highest repute and unimpeachable integrity, the offi-
cial journal of the American Statistical Association,
verifying and correcting my statements by correspon-
dence with the writers of the articles, none of whom
is arguing against Feminism.
First, it is now provetl that half the college women
graduates do not marry at all. In an article in the
Journal of the American Statistical Association
(June, 19 14) has been brought together in scientific
fashion all the available^ marriage statistics of the
women graduates of colleges in America. The
I writer concludes her examination as follows: " The
] decade of 1890 to 1899 is undoubtedly the most
fairly representative (as respects marriage rates).
On the one hand, it falls within the epoch which ac-
cepted college education for women and looked upon
it as thoroughly respectable. On the other hand,
the graduates in the latest graduating class (1899)
are now at least thirty-five years of age.
The marriage record of the decade is therefore
fairly complete. The eight colleges graduating
more than one hundred students each during the
decade (Earlham, Swarthmore, Wilson, Indiana,
Vassar, Radcliffe, Wellesley and Bryn Mawr) show
fairly uniform marriage rates. The lowest is Bryn
Mawr, 41.8 per cent. (294 graduates), and the
highest Swarthmore, 58.7 per cent. ( 148 graduates) .
It is probable that the marriage rate for this decade
is fairly representative of the tendency in the mod-
ern women's college world." And, as shown by the
figures for this decade : " The proportion of
women college graduates who marry is approxi-
mately one-half." Possibly a few members of the
latest classes included in the calculation might marry
after the age of thirty-five or thirty-six; but so few
as not to affect the argument.
This conclusion is accepted by women leaders
themselves as indisputable. Miss M. Carey
Thomas, president of Bryn Mawr College, says
" that 50 per cent, of women college graduates
marry and 40 per cent, bear and rear children," ^
a gracious concession on their part to nature and to
society which should, in her opinion, save them from
hostile criticism. To feminists it appears "to be a
matter of astonishment, a claim on man's gratitude,
that one college woman out of two still consents to
marry and two out of five actually bear a child.
. . . .
Next, how many children do those college women
bear, who do have any at all? We know that the
376 women who graduated from Vassar between
1880 and 1889 had, by 19 12, given birth to 348
children and that the 518 women who graduated dur-
ing the same period from Wellesley had given birth
to 427 children, which means less than i child per
graduate in each case, or for every 100 graduates
who married, 167.3 ^"^ 166.1 children, respectively.
Since the youngest of these women would be over 45
years old when the count was made, it is unlikely
that their families will increase. Plainly they have
not been recklessly prolific. They have scorned the
injunction to increase and multiply.
. . . .
That is the central and stupefying fact. Women
college graduates in America bear only two-fifths as
many children in proportion to their number as other
native white American women.
It is not contended that the whole of this differ-
icnce of fertility is due to the woman's movement.
[Other factors operate — social and financial condi-
tions, the desire for luxury, the high standard of liv-
ing, the inability of their natural mates to marry as
young as formerly, the desire to give each child born
the highest training society offers. Can the influ-
ence of these factors be separated and a residuum,
the effect of the woman's movement, be left? Yes.
http://archive.org/stream/feminismitsfall01martgoog/feminismitsfall01martgoog_djvu.txtThe sɛҳuąƖ revolution has had many stages and has been happening for a long time, as has the feminist movement. (It is ongoing, and we are reaching a new stage now, marriage itself is beginning to show cracks like never before.)
The feminist revolution and the sɛҳuąƖ revolution are very closely connected to each other - one could almost say they are just different aspects of the same movement.
Nearly every issue pertaining to feminism has to do with the woman's sex life. That is really what the movement is all about, and that is why abortion is the defining issue of the feminist movement. The goal of opening opportunities for various kinds of achievement for women has always been secondary. Like the argument women should be doctors so only they can examine women, they must be gendarmes for women's prisons (which requires college?) etc, always, the same motivations are at play.
With regard to college, it's important to recognize it first became popular among classes that were already practicing birth control, and the more it was embraced, the more the women in those classes tended to have reduced fertility.
The college education of women as a social norm depends on contraception being a social norm. That is the reality.
Topic: Women going to college? (Read 44560 times)