Women facing Opposition and Opportunity in Curriculum
On page 6 of the General Bulletin from 1968-1969 for St. Edward's University, it states that the purpose of education for the male students will help them achieve goals within the public sphere. This would include jobs outside the home, courses towards majors in science and mathmatic fields, and to cultivate moral values.
On page 132 of the 1968-1969 General Bulletin, it states that women should be educated as women. Men were to be educated in order to prepare themselves for a job with in society, while women were prepared for domestic life.
College students today know the struggle of choosing courses, getting advising, and waiting for registration to come along. Women in the 1960's not only had to stress about these things but they also faced societal expectations as well. Maryhill College offered women courses that fit into the separate sphere ideology of the time. The courses for women included Humanities, Literature, Music, and some Foreign Language courses. The men, however, were given several course opportunities at St. Edward's University, including but not limited to, Philosophy, Sciences, Mathematics, and Business courses. Students today would have seen this as clear discrimination against women in higher education.
Women are constantly being discriminated against all throughout history, and in various fields and enterprises. St. Edward's University and Maryhill College were no exception. In their general bulletin for the years 1968 and 1969, the academic purpose for the male students greatly overshadowed the expectations for the female students on campus. This bulletin states that for men their education will provide for them the means to continue to go in depth in their studies and advanced study. It would also prepare them for the demands of a occupation [4].
There were also several implementations made for the benefit of men but also helped to benefit women in to going to college. One of these is the G.I. Bill. According to research done by historian Linda Eisenmann on post-war college women, the G.I. Bill helped to get women on campus but they were only seen as the wives of the service men attending college courses. She states “a wide variety of men as students, it limited women's image to helpmate.” [6] Although this bill helped get women onto college campuses, it did however tend to implement new restrictions on them as well. Now colleges were starting to focus on gaining male students that participated within the war effort, which led them to reject female student applications. Eisenmann goes further to discuss these restrictions placed on women directly after the war. Eventually women decided that they wanted to continue their educations and persevere within higher education regardless of the adversity they faced. Women and men began to realize that professorship was not just a man’s job, Eisenmann writes, “36% of faculty in teachers colleges and 33% in small non public colleges were female”. [7] Women were actually shown to have struggled more in non public or private universities, like Maryhill College.
In this article from the St. Edward's Alumni Newsleter from October 1966, female students are pictured registering for classes with the male students. The caption under the photo states that the male teachers, staff, and students are being distracted by the "pretty young ladies" of Maryhill College.
It is no secret that women faced discrimination in higher education; Sonia Goltz identifies the ways in which women tried to combat discriminatory behavior. One of the ways was by “adapting their behaviors,” this was so that they would become less of a target towards people looking to discriminate against them. [8] This was true about five of the total fourteen women interviewed by Goltz. She continues by stating that all the women at some point did try to correct the situation rather than just coping with it. [9] This was an important part of the female experience within higher education. The reason these women were able to continue to grow in their education was because they would not back down.
Women were not alone in the struggle, men were fighting for the implementation of diversity within college campuses. Historians Christopher P. Loss and Christopher J. Lucas documented the struggle of institutions to transform themselves and become more diverse. Lucas argues that colleges needed to transform in order to have a sense of legitimacy. Loss states that diversity was a solution because it gave students a voice of their own, separate from parents, that created a sense of community within the college campus, reducing alienation. Loss argues that diversity in higher education was important because it led to the students developing their own voices to use to better the world and to change politics. [8] Women are a good example of this, once they decided that they wanted an equal education they fought for it, they formed groups and protested, and petitioned the government in order to have their own education. The women of Maryhill College were no exception to this. By showing up despite the challenges they faced, they were helping to pave the way for women in higher education everywhere.