Women Stive For Higher Education In The Late 19th Century

During the late nineteenth century the women’s labor force was increasing steadily in manufacturing occupations. This increase wasn’t due to an increasing degree of women’s knowledge, it was due to the “seek for excitement and independence or, more likely, to contribute to their families’ subsistence and their own self support, cultural and economic changes combined to create a new stage in the female life cycle” (Evans 133). Although this new stage of women’s work seemed like a great advantage, women still weren’t able to expand their mental abilities. Magazines such as Good Housekeeping tried to promote the perfection of women’s household and nurturing skills. Women who possessed such skills were considered educated and favorable. This was a huge contradiction because if women were to become experts in their arena, they would need more education than a women’s magazine could provide (Evans 139). This contradiction expanded on the thought of higher education for women.

Since the 1860’s colleges and universities, such as Smith College, were coeducational. The founder of Smith College, Sophia Smith, once said “It is not my design to render my sex

The growing discontent promoted the formation of women’s clubs and associations. These clubs and associations provided women with intellectual stimulation that could not be found in the home. Women’s club meetings consisted of reading literature as well as providing cultural events. Such activities lead women to generate ambition and develop new goals. The clubs promoted public speaking, fund-raising, and administrative skills.

By 1880 forty thousand women were enrolled in colleges and universities in the United States. They totaled 32 percent of total students (Filene 238). Women college graduates founded the Association of Collegiate Alumnae in 1882. The ACA provided women with an opportunity to raise the standards of female education. Most members were teachers supporting themselves on very little pay. They worked to improve their own salaries, to counteract popular ideas that education went against female nature and to provide first fellowship specifically for women who aspired to do graduate work abroad (O’Neill 77).

The efforts of American women to get an education in the late 19th century were successful. Today I sit here and can thankfully say that I am taking a women’s history course. Women in colleges all over the United States can learn and appreciate women’s passed struggles and relate to their strength. All though, the struggle yet still arises within our society, women if he past have led the way to where we are today. Roughly 35 percent of the world’s women population is illiterate. In the United States alone, there is 9 percent women’s illiteracy. Through out the nation’s colleges women are outnumbering men at an amazingly great length. There will always be conflict regarding gender and equality. Being a woman in any part of the world is a little more difficult to receive certain benefits and rights as opposed to men. For example, in the United States women are fighting in courts because their salaries have not been met satisfactory in regards to their education status. That is only one of the many conflicts that women have in this nation as we speak.

While I was doing research on this topic, I felt so much more grateful to have been able to have an

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