In the history of Japanese education, the "gender characteristics theory" that men and women naturally have different characteristics rejected not only the "gender equality theory" which came from Western Europe in the early Meiji era, but also the traditional "male chauvinism" of East Asia. According to the theory of…

This paper uses the writings of European teachers and Chinese students at St. Stephen's Girls' College in Hong Kong--published in English periodicals of its school magazine and local English newspapers--to examine how the school tactically positioned itself as an educational site for the "useful women of China" during a period in…

Historically, patriarchy has been as dominant in education in Ireland as elsewhere. In the Irish context, it was promoted through the male-dominated Catholic Church, which controlled either directly or indirectly the vast majority of education institutions in the country. This dominant hegemony was most powerful during the period…

This paper examines the impacts of co-residence (admitting women to men's colleges and men to women's colleges) at the University of Oxford beginning in the 1970s. Co-residence increased the representation of women undergraduates at Oxford to near parity with men; the representation of women in academic positions rose but not as substantially as…

Historically, education has often varied by curriculum, access, and stature based on location, race, gender, economic status, religion, and time period. In addition, many educational institutions and much scholarly research have been significantly impacted by private foundation support. This essay discusses the politics of knowledge as it relates…

Since the 1970's, national universities in Saudi Arabia have created closed centers for women off their main campuses. Though segregated, women study and work in accordance with the same structure and regulation of "mother" universities. This study investigates women administrators work conditions, their role in decision-making, the…

This article surveys the extracurricular writing of the first women to attend Girton and Newnham Colleges at Cambridge University. It argues that such student writing did more than promote intellectual formation or rehearse new knowledge; indeed, it changed institutional culture and the social horizons for middle-class women's lives.

Historical scholarship has traditionally focused on the commonalities uniting Catharine Beecher and Mary Lyon, the two leading antebellum women's educational reformers in New England. This essay shifts that focus by contrasting their educational philosophies and exploring the implications their differences had for the development of American…

Since their creation in the latter part of the nineteenth century, women's colleges in America have undergone many significant changes. In 1960, over 230 women's colleges were in operation; over the next forty years more than 75 percent chose to admit men or shut their doors entirely (Miller-Bernal, 2006a). This chapter will shed light on the…

The history of coeducation in U.S. higher education is explored through an analysis of a database containing information on all institutions offering four-year undergraduate degrees that operated in 1897, 1924, 1934, or 1980, most of which still exist today. These data reveal surprises about the timing of coeducation and the reasons for its…

Opening in 1837, Wesleyan Female Seminary became by 1855 one of the small number of colleges for women in the United States. The question is to what extent Wesleyan was a true college as that word was understood at the time, along with the wider issue of what constituted a college as the concept became transformed during the nineteenth century. In…

This study examined the founding of the New Jersey College for Women as an exemplary case that illustrates important social and political issues regarding women's access and acceptance to higher education during the Progressive Era. The New Jersey College for Women was founded as a public women's college that was affiliated with the state's…

In this article, I test claims made about rhetorical education for women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by examining Florida State College for Women (FSCW), one of eight public women's colleges in the South. I recover the voices of instructors and students by looking both at the interweaving strands of literature, journalism,…

Colorado Women's College (CWC), a private, Baptist college for women in Denver, Colorado, first welcomed students to its campus in 1909, making it one of only a handful of women's colleges in the American West, where coeducation predominated. This dissertation describes and interprets the curriculum offered at CWC in the period from 1909 to 1967.…

At the turn of the century approximately a thousand white Southern women braved the consternation of friends and sometimes family, and traveled hundreds of miles to attend the best Northern women's colleges for an education unavailable to them in the South. For many, the experience was revolutionary: they developed self-confidence, independence,…