Schools for women popped up across the country, with co-ed colleges coming in the mid-19th century (though their reasons for admitting women were sometimes financial rather than progressive). Its main reason for being was simple: Educated women became educated mothers who could then instruct their children - particularly (no surprise here) their male children, 'who might grow into influential church and secular leaders.' Teaching the women themselves was in many ways beside the point.

The Ursuline Academy of New Orleans, which opened in 1727, was probably the first girls' school in the United States. Peril's chronicle of the ambivalence and hostility that have long greeted women seeking higher education feels distressingly contemporary.Īs Peril tells it, women's education initially had very little to do with women at all. But this book, an interesting if slight history of women in college, is worth checking out - particularly in the wake of ex-Harvard University president Lawrence Summers's 2005 remarks that 'innate' differences may explain why women fare worse than men in math and science careers. They're applying for internships and studying for the GMATs, not taking home economics courses or worrying about that Mrs. Much of Lynn Peril's College Girls: Bluestockings, Sex Kittens, and Coeds, Then and Now (Norton paperback, $16.95) will seem like ancient history to today's undergrads.

College Girls by Lynn Peril