History of Women in Education

In order to understand the women’s education movement, it is important to have a brief background of its history. During the time of the ideal subservient woman a few bold women and events stand out as milestones in history. The first is in 1833; Oberlin College was founded. It was the nations first university to accept women and black students.
The next important event was the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. This convention added fuel to the flame of education and suffrage. The Seneca Falls Declaration has been called “the single most important document of the nineteenth-century American woman’s movement”. At the convention a declaration concerning women’s rights was adopted modeling the Declaration of Independence. Appearing in addition to issues of suffrage were issues of education and employment. The Declaration of Sentiments states: He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration. He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction, which he considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known. He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education - all colleges being closed against her. (Schneir 77) This event is of utmost importance to the women’s rights movement. It laid the foundation for future achievements even though suffrage was not achieved until 1920.
After the Seneca Falls Convention women continued to achieve milestones in education. In 1877, Helen Magill became the first woman in the United States to earn her Ph.D. By 1880, women comprised eighty percent of all elementary school educators, and by 1910 women made up 39 percent of all collegiate undergraduate students and even 20 percent of all college faculty. Finally, in 1920 women’s suffrage was achieved, giving women a secure foothold in society. In 1945, the first woman was accepted to Harvard Medical School, and by 1972 Title XI was passed to help end the discrimination based on sex for any educational program that received federal funding. In 1980 women equaled men in numbers enrolled in colleges with 51 percent. Finally, in 1996 Virginia Military Institute was forced by the Supreme Court to become coeducational (Eisenmann appendix).
There are many other events along the path to education that helped women achieve the status they enjoy today. This brief chronology merely traces a few of the hundreds of thousands of victories women had to win in order to become educated.