Women’s Colleges: An Antidote to Gender Bias
By Julianne Malveaux*
From Response, October 2009
Women’s colleges, cognizant of the ways gender shapes educational experiences, are able to offer a supportive, challenging and life-transforming experience for students. Women’s colleges are a haven for women, an oasis, a safe space, and a foundation for women’s future growth and development.
Bennett College for Women
Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, N.C., is one such oasis where women are educated, celebrated and developed into 21st century leaders and global thinkers. Founded in the unpaved basement of Warnersville Methodist Episcopal
Church (now St. Matthews United Methodist Church), in 1873, the college was reorganized as a women’s college in 1926. Since then it has distinguished itself in scholarship, service, social justice and a commitment to leadership. Bennett College’s Annie Pfeiffer Chapel was the site of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s first speech in Greensboro in 1957. None of the churches would host Mr. King for fear of upsetting the political apple cart. Dr. Willa Player, the first woman president of Bennett College, said that a liberal arts college taught students how to think, not what to think, and Mr. King was welcome to speak to the students.
Bennett women have been involved at the cutting edge of many social movements. We were the backbone of the Woolworth’s sit-ins in 1960 in Greensboro, and though women were not at the lunch counters, they were outside getting arrested, even in the hats and gloves that distinguished them in those days. Sandy Neely Smith, Student Government Association president in 1972, was a dedicated and impassioned community organizer. She was killed in a collision between the Klan and a group of community organizers in 1979. In 2007, Student Government Association President Tiffany Lindsay led 50 Bennett students to Jena, La., to support the Jena 6, young African American men who were charged with criminal conduct for a high school melee. With an enrollment of 675, those students represented 7.5 percent of the Bennett student body. In 2008, more than 90 percent of Bennett Belles went to the polls — Bennett Belles are voting Belles!
I am privileged to lead Bennett College for Women, a small HBCU (historically black college and university) that is one of 11 United Methodist affiliated HBCUs. We are one of only two HBCUs (the other is Spellman College in Atlanta, Ga.) focused on educating women. And we are survivors! There were more than 300 women’s colleges in 1960; now there are fewer than 50. And just 3 percent of all prospective college students say they will consider applying to and enrolling in a women’s college.
Why women’s colleges?
With women outnumbering men in higher education, some ask, is the notion of a women’s college obsolete? Women, after all, attend Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown and Howard Universities, and often outnumber men in the classroom. With unprecedented access to the full array of educational options, why should anyone come to a college for women?
There is much diversity in the roster of 4,000-plus colleges and universities in this nation. There are Jesuit colleges (Boston College, Notre Dame), Jewish colleges (Brandeis, Yeshiva), HBCUs (Hampton, Philander Smith), United Methodist affiliated colleges (Duke, Greensboro College), and others. Why not colleges that focus on women? There is data that suggests those who attend women’s colleges are being uniquely prepared for leadership and service.
From the 2007 National Survey of Student Engagement, we learn students who attended women’s colleges were more engaged in civic involvement than others. They were more likely to engage in higher order thinking activities, more likely to be involved in collaborative learning and student-faculty interaction. When compared to women at coeducational institutions, those who attended women’s colleges indicate they have greater gains in understanding themselves and others.
Students at women’s colleges have more female mentors and role models available among faculty and top administrators. They have greater opportunities for student leadership roles. They are more likely, at women’s colleges, to major in math, science and engineering. And they are more likely to be taken seriously.
Women’s colleges aren’t for everyone, but we are havens for students who want to be nurtured and developed, to explore their leadership skills and styles, and to be academically challenged around issues of ability, not gender. We believe young women should place no limits on their aspirations. And we provide the opportunity for young women to explore both their aspirations and their options. In an article on the Women’s College Coalition website, Geraldine Clifford says, “Gender is one of the most potent forces in shaping human institutions, including education.”
In the past, women’s college graduates were more likely than others to be leaders (consider two recent Secretaries of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Madeleine Albright). In the future, women’s leadership may be more diverse, but those women who have the privilege of laying an undergraduate foundation at a women’s college will continue to distinguish themselves because of the uniqueness of their experience. Though women have access to an array of educational institutions, those who attend women’s colleges are more likely to undertake graduate study in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) areas, and more likely to attend graduate and professional school than graduates from coeducational institutions. Imagine the surge in women scientists if coeducational institutions were able to model some of their educational offerings on those of women’s colleges!
Women’s colleges’ faculty, staff and administrators come from a diversity of institutions. Some of us attended women’s colleges, and many did not. Some of our experiences at coeducational institutions explain our passion for women’s colleges and the educational options they offer. Women who have worked as faculty and staff at coeducational institutions are often in a minority among the most influential and tenured faculty; many observe and experience gender bias in the hiring and promotion process. Less than five years ago, then Harvard President Larry Summers opined that women did not have the same innate ability for math and science as men. With such attitudes held at the pinnacle of our nation’s most influential institution of higher education, is there any wonder that some women feel able, prepared and still somewhat unwelcome at some coeducational institutions?
As long as there is gender bias in our nation, women’s colleges play a vital role in educating and celebrating women, instigating research and writing about women’s roles, and training young women for leadership. We at Bennett College for Women are excited about our future, and that of our nearly 50 sister colleges who provide dynamic opportunities for the next generation.
