Women 's Impact On Women

Women’s education in the United States made huge strides during the Progressive Era. However, along with those strides came negative reactions from not only men but women as well. These second generation women started moving away from their expected nurturing professions and instead started going into male dominated professions. Some of these professions were doctors and lawyers, just to name a few. Due to these career changes, women were required to have bachelor’s degrees and training.

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

As discussed in a recent essay by Saul Kaplan “The Plight of Young Males”, there is a serious academic gender achievement gap in the United States and as I will discuss, around the world. Young women are doing significantly better than young men, and the results are shocking. In the latest census, males make up 51 percent of the total U.S. population between the ages of 18-24. Yet only 40 percent of today’s college students are men. Since 1982, more American women than men have received bachelor’s degrees. In the last ten years, two million more women graduated from college than men. As Kaplan reveals, the average eleventh-grade boy writes at the level of the average eighth-grade girl. He also states that women dominate high school honor rolls and now make up more than 70 percent of class valedictorians. Kaplan says, “I am happy to see women succeeding. But can we really afford for our country’s young men to fall so far behind,” (733)?

Theme: Education, especially for women, is a valued aspect men desire women to not take part in. However, having the privilege of being more knowledgeable than others can led to segregating others, ultimately corrupting yourself.

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

Women were so tired of being treated unequal to men and started to look for change. They rose above society to make a point that women deserve an education so they can better themselves. “By 1886, there were 192 women's assemblies, and an additional number of women joined formerly all-male assemblies” (Manning 2013). By the end of the 1800’s, the number of women that were done being mistreated started to rise rapidly. Women continued to take over men’s “jobs” because they were just as capable. It was unusual for women to try to attend colleges, but they gradually started to apply. “Although few persons obtained a college education then, by 1880 women constituted one of every three students enrolled at institutions of higher learning, and many remained single. Of eight thousand female college graduates in 1880, only five thousand were married” (Sklar 1998). Marriage seemed to be one of the main factors that restricted many women into getting a college degree. Women during that time were better off because they did not have to worry about men’s daily opinions of them and how they should act and

The foundation of colleges for women as well as events at women’s rights conventions intellectually challenged society’s views on women’s traditional roles. As education became more of a public governmental service, the educational

In Privilege, Shamus Khan examines how the once exclusively prestigious boarding school, St. Paul’s, is now open to a more diverse influx of elite students. This includes lower income individuals, nonwhites, and women. Even with this newfound openness, there is still a persisting inequity present. One prominent type of inequality at the institution is the gender differences displayed. These gender inequities are evident through the double standards of academic achievement and the portrayal of sexuality of the girls at St. Paul’s.

Year by year, women and minorities are becoming an ever-shrinking population within the field of academia and more specifically the study of economics. There are far more barriers for women to overcome within the field, mainly per bias and cognitive bias of employers and co-workers, but further that into the totality of society. Some of the systematic barriers in place are constructed by men to get an advantage in the work place, even if that may not be apparent to them; as described by this article in the New York Times “Why Women’s Voices are Scare in Economics”. One quote given by Justin Wolfers explains just how difficult progress can be achieved, compared to that of a man. “Women in the field often are held to higher standards in written

In a publication titled ‘Black Women in Academe’, author Yolanda Moses describes how “isolation, invisibility, hostility, indifference, and a lack of understanding of the Black women’s experiences are all too often part of the climate Black women may face on campuses” (Moses, 1989). The detrimental environment surrounding these women frequently results in sullenness, lack of social assertiveness, and belief that they are less competent than male students. Even if time spent at an academic institution is minimal, with this kind of prejudice faced at an early age, any woman- black or otherwise, would suffer the rest of their life. In response to the discrimination faced at universities, some have created programs to aid black students and other minorities; these programs tend to generalize the needs of all its black students and do not fully support black women specifically.

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.

When delving into the content of Rich’s essay, the author clearly indicates her focus on the gender imbalance in education and how that impacts the lives of women. Women’s education has been treated as an addition to the education of men, resulting in university and high school curriculum that does not “provide the kind of knowledge for women, the knowledge of Womankind, whose experience has been so profoundly different than Mankind” (Rich 389). This limited view has influenced the way in which education is taught in regards to gender, leaving women to know next to nothing about the history of their gender. Ignorance about their past leaves women with no knowledge about the gender they belong to and how they

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)