I was a few years behind Drew Faust at BFU and in a different department, and, while no one can really “seem like a future president” of anything, much less Harvard, in a graduate seminar, she definitely had her stuff together while us callow first-years were trying to figure out how to spell the names of campus buildings, or what the heck an “AHA smoker” was. (A term that the prof-staff would drop into conversations with knowing
looks). I wondered about the Haverford exception in the above post. Because my understanding of the single-sex benefit would have presumed that it needed to be pretty much absolute. Did the ‘ford longhorns tend to behave differently depending on whether they were playing home or away? Or did you ever go down the road to find out?

My mother went to a (Catholic) all-women’s college, and definitely emerged from there with a don’t need to wait for, or on, the menz, perspective on the world. Although I was way too clueless to ask or even wonder about any possible connection between those things when I still might have found out.

It wasn’t feminist per se, in that I don’t ever recall being told that I could do anything as a woman. My parents just didn’t make the distinction. In their minds, I was smart enough to do anything I set my mind to and there were no obstacles to my success unless I put them there. College was about getting a career and a profession, not about getting married.

This was exactly PhysioWife’s family context, and she has reached the six-sigma highest reaches of her profession.

But, when I read these posts about women’s ambitions being squashed, I realize that for all my parents’ flaws and restrictions, I somehow managed to grow up thinking I could do anything. It wasn’t feminist per se, in that I don’t ever recall being told that I could do anything as a woman. My parents just didn’t make the distinction. In their minds, I was smart enough to do anything I set my mind to and there were no obstacles to my success unless I put them there. College was about getting a career and a profession, not about getting married. (My mother would have been devastated if I’d gotten married in my early 20s.) My mother wouldn’t have supported my going to a women’s university, which was fine. I didn’t want to go to one. But I think part of her reservation probably would have been along the lines that I could compete with anybody so why pretend otherwise? (I recognize that that’s a misreading of women’s universities; I’m just explaining her logic.)

And, in another thing that seemed minor at the time but has turned out to be a pretty big deal, my mother encouraged my platonic friendships with boys in my classes. There were probably about 4 or 5 guys that I was good friends with in high school. So I’ve always seen myself as equal to them and colleagues, etc., rather than view every single guy as a potential romantic possibility. It always struck me as normal but a few years ago, I was at a workshop type thing in my graduate program and was shocked to hear some of the women saying that they were intimidated about talking to some of the male graduate students in our program about their work because it might be seen as flirting. (One woman went so far as to say that this worry of hers didn’t stop until she got into a serious relationship herself.)

So yeah, you can find feminism in strange places.

Z, I think you’re right that family matters a lot. Different students benefit from different learning environments–there is no one right way to educate a young woman.

And, Jack–you’re right that nursing is still very female-dominated. But I know a lot of dudes who are nurses, in part because it’s an in-demand field but also in part I’m sure because I live 1/2 a mile from the big nursing school in my state.

This was also true at the large state university I went to from 1974 (freshman) to 1987 (PhD) — the pressure not to take oneself seriously came from home, not from school, and from my parents, not my grandparents, great aunts and uncles and so on, all of whom had been born in the 19th century.

I didn’t find out about women afraid to participate in class discussion because of not finding men and so on until I started working in a SLAC filled mostly with people from the East.

That was in the late 80s and so it fits with the postfeminist delusions and so on. Now most of my students are women, because I teach literature and men don’t seem to study that here too much, so it’s like having a women’s college inside a big university.

I still think though that it’s home not school that forms peoples’ attitudes. I don’t know, maybe a small women’s college would have been yet more super therapeutic for me than regular college. Serious therapy about my sexist parents would have been helpful.

But it all sounded so precious and goody-goody at the time, and family-esque, and I wanted to go into the world, and not have to have a mentor.

This is not to say I don’t mega-admire those colleges and all.

I’m only 5’5″, at least 7-8 inches below Presidential height, I think. .

I imagine the ability to be regally intimidating is a necessary quality for presidents of women’s colleges.