Development Of Women Higher Education

Women are obtaining more then half of the bachelor degrees earned in America but that has not limited the earning and abilities of the working class man. Phyllis Rosser’s, Too Many Women in College? (2005) is used to expose the still continuing gender issues in higher education. It exposes the issue that yes, there are more women then men in undergrad and master’s programs but men are still outnumbering women in doctoral programs as well as higher paying fields of study (engineering, computer science, business). Still regardless of education women will still face the income gap. Comparing Lee’s and Shaw’s conclusion to the study by Investing in Futures Public Higher Education in America, Women in Higher Education both sources have come to the conclusion that women make up over half of students enrolled in undergrad and their is an uneven representation of women in math and science based degree programs. Janet Lee’s and Susan M. Shaw’s, Women’s Voices Feminist Visions Classic and Contemporary Readings is an accredited and well developed source that highlights the development of women’s

Judith Sargent Murray’s On the Equality of the Sexes reveals the struggles women had in the 17th-18th centuries when it came to equal education opportunities. Women were expected to become people of domestication while men had many opportunities to expand their minds and be ambitious, and be leaders. Women were expected to focus on taking care of their family, not to have minds of their own. They wanted change.

During the 1800’s it was almost impossible for a female to attain an education because many believed that education was just for males. As society continued to develop, females began to attend school, allowing them to receive a proper education. However, gender has always had an influence in both males and females educational path. As previously stated, males have always dominated stem fields, while females have excelled in humanities. The culture one is educated in could be the major reason why there are different standards for males and females when it comes to education. However, as a society, we cannot simply say that one’s gender does not impact one’s educational path because statistics have proven

So today both men and women have the same working rights. This force of women is a good example of girls in education now wanting to work hard so they can get good, well paid jobs just like boys can. Girls have been encouraged to see their future in terms of having paid work, rather than just housewives with no part-time job on the side. However, there are obvious examples of men still having an authority over women. Most head teachers of schools today are male and the actual subject/year teachers tend to be female with less male teachers. An Equal Pay Act was introduced in 1970 making it illegal to pay women less than men and in 1975 the Sex Discrimination Act was introduced in 1975, which outlaws sex discrimination in the world of work. Since 1975, the pay gap has decreased from 30% to only 17%, but there is still a gap. There has also been an increase in the percentage of women in employment from 47%, in 1959, to over 70% in 2007. Due to women being mothers, the growth of the service sector and flexible part-time jobs has opened up plenty of opportunities for women to work. Yet traditional men’s jobs have declined. Margaret Prosser says that “in the last 30 years since the Equal Pay Act there have been many changes in women’s economic participation and achievement… and accessing training and jobs which previous generations would not have considered open to women.”

The origins of higher education in the United States can be traced all the way back to the colonial era, with the founding of Harvard University in 1636 (Delbanco, 2012; Thelin, 2004). However, it would take another two centuries for women to receive similar opportunities of advanced education. Excluded from attending colleges by statute (Thelin, 2004), women in

“The subject of the Education of Women of the higher classes is one which has undergone singular fluctuations in public opinions” (Cobbe 79). Women have overcome tremendous obstacles throughout their lifetime, why should higher education stand in their way? In Frances Power Cobbe’s essay “The Education of Women,” she describes how poor women, single women, and childless wives, deserve to share a part of the human happiness. Women are in grave need of further improvements in their given condition. Cobbe suggests that a way to progress these improvements manifests in higher education, and that this will help further steps in advance. Cobbe goes on to say that the happiest home, most grateful husband, and the most devoted children came from a woman, Mary Sommerville, who surpassed men in science, and is still studying the wonders of God’s creations. Cobbe has many examples within her paper that shows the progression of women as a good thing, and how women still fulfill their duties despite the fact that they are educated. The acceptance of women will be allowed at the University of New England because women should be able to embrace their abilities and further their education for the benefit of their household, their lives, and their country.

Women universities in the U.S. were built up to fill the requirement for advanced education for women in light of the fact that most early universities in the United States conceded just men. They were the standard in the beginning of women' entrance to advanced education and a large portion of them flourished until prestigious male-just foundations of advanced education started to concede female understudies. As far back as the appearances of coeducational organizations of advanced education in the U.S., a few adversaries of women' universities begun to scrutinize the need of women' schools since they trust that there is no longer the legitimization for presence of women' universities; they defamed the legitimacy of women' single-sex instruction since they consider that the issue of imbalance in the

In the 21st Century the number of women enrolling in higher education institutions is surpassing the numbers of men enrolled. The graduation rates of women from high school and higher education are most often higher than for men. The number of women graduates from most professional occupations, including higher paying medicine, law and business, will exceed the number of men graduates in the near future. In numerous occupational areas with a majority of women graduates, salaries already surpass salaries in occupational areas with a majority of men graduates.

Equal Access to Higher Education: Believe it or not, until the 1970’s, some colleges and universities refused to accept women into their institutions. Why? The answer’s simple: education officials at the time

The 1870 Education Act highlighted inequality in the school system between genders not only in the class room but in the running of schools. This obviously led to a lot of change for the role and status of women in the 1870’s and early 20th century, including creating a political identity, proving women’s ability to work well in politics, and creating an educated generation ready for further radical change.

Higher education was the necessary foundation women needed in order to be recognized as valuable members of society. However, females often received inadequate schooling. A traditional education was aimed

As the years went by, more institutions of higher education for women were founded due to the changing times, new laws, and new societal trends emerging; namely, shortages of teachers due to the increase in students in public schools and reading materials directed to and for women.

Only 45% of academics with female leading to the amount of female professors being just 22%. People believing that women shouldn’t have a good education didn’t just recently start, but it’s been a thing for years. “57 million children worldwide, including 31 million girls, are out of school and two thirds of illiterate adults are women. In developing countries, adolescent girls are more likely to drop-out of secondary school than boys, particularly in rural areas.” ( Right to Education Project). In most cases girls and women just don’t drop out of school because they don’t want to be there, but because they have to. Women are seen as the caretaker in many culture and we made to cook, clean, and take care of our families while the men go get jobs and provide. Men are seen as “stronger” and “smarter”. Many believe that females are suppose to be a being that’s sensitive, small, and very feminine, while men are strong, big, and extremely masculine. This isn’t the case, women SHOULD be able to be as masculine or feminine as they want while men SHOULD have the same

In Adrienne Rich's essay, "Claiming an Education", the author speaks about the female experience against the male-dominated academic scene. Despite the fact that this essay was written in 1979, a number of Rich's points seem timeless. Rich encourages young women to insist on a life of meaningful work. As a seventeen-year-old student, I have often heard from my female companions that they anticipate a higher education as an opportunity to hunt down a spouse. The frequency and zeal of this conclusion, seeing education only as means of marriage, strikes me as particularly pitiful and archaic. Adrienne Rich’s thesis in “Claiming an Education” aptly expresses the array of roles women hold in societies, the benefits, and weaknesses of our education system, as well as the struggles that women are exposed to. She successfully develops her thesis statement by the effective use of a variety of methods of development and various literary devices to improve her writing quality and to help readers interpret her message. I agree with Rich’s thesis statement because education entails being responsible for oneself, not just for women, but for all students.

In the us women with some college education have more opportunities for higher paying jobs and this has affected society by making women more independent. Having an education does not mean a job is in the near future. Having an education is a way to establish self-esteem, better one’s self as well as gain knowledge. Women’s colleges and universities persist around the world, even as the vast majority of tertiary institutions are open to men and women. In nearly every nation, women can attend even the most elite formerly all-male universities, and in several nations women are many of all college students. Questions therefore arise about the continued need for a single-sex sector in the 21st century (Renn , 2012)