This long-awaited synthesis approaches the past three centuries with an eye to highlighting the importance of significant schools, as well as important women educators in the emergence of secondary education for girls. At the same time, each contributor pays careful attention to the specific political, cultural, and socio-economic factors that…

Nineteenth-century assumptions about the nature of women, her educability, her role in society, and debates about coeducation are examined in this record of the efforts of the first women students to gain entrance in McGill University in Canada. The introduction offers historical background, ideas of women, and the opening of higher education to…

The social, cultural, and economic circumstances that have shaped the development of women's higher education are discussed. After considering colonial America when women were outsiders to liberal arts institutions, the creation of women's and co-educational colleges is traced and the process by which women of different ethnic, racial, religious,…

Discrimination against women in U.S. society and the academic world is detailed in the eight chapters of this book. Inconsistencies in American society, and arbitrary societal standards that have perpetuated discriminatory behavior toward women are examined. Part I focuses on the socialization process that women undergo as Americans and as women…