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Education Higher

University Women

A History of Women and Higher Education in Canada

by (author) Sara Z. MacDonald

Publisher
McGill-Queen's University Press
Initial publish date
Nov 2021
Category
Higher, General, Women's Studies
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780228008644
    Publish Date
    Nov 2021
    List Price
    $39.95
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780228008637
    Publish Date
    Nov 2021
    List Price
    $140.00
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780228009917
    Publish Date
    Nov 2021
    List Price
    $39.95

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Description

Bessie Scott, nearing the end of her first year at university in the spring of 1890, recorded in her diary: “Wore my gown for first time! It didn’t seem at all strange to do so.” Often deemed a cumbersome tradition by men, the cap and gown were dearly prized by women as an outward sign of their hard-won admission to the rank of undergraduates. For the first generations of university women, higher education was an exhilarating and transformative experience, but these opportunities would narrow in the decades that followed.

In University Women Sara MacDonald explores the processes of integration and separation that marked women’s contested entrance into higher education. Examining the period between 1870 and 1930, this book is the first to provide a comparative study of women at universities across Canada. MacDonald concludes that women’s higher education cannot be seen as a progressive narrative, a triumphant story of trailblazers and firsts, of doors being thrown open and staying open. The early promise of equal education was not fulfilled in the longer term, as a backlash against the growing presence of women on campuses resulted in separate academic programs, closer moral regulation, and barriers that restricted their admission into the burgeoning fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The modernization of higher education ultimately marginalized women students, researchers, and faculty within the diversified universities of the twentieth century.

University Women uncovers the systemic inequalities based on gender, race, and class that have shaped Canadian higher education. It is indispensable reading for those concerned with the underrepresentation of girls and women in STEM and current initiatives to address issues of access and equity within our academic institutions.

About the author

Sara Z. MacDonald is associate professor in the Department of History at Laurentian University.

Sara Z. MacDonald's profile page

Editorial Reviews

"A book on the entrance of women into institutions of higher education in Canada is long overdue and this will become the definitive work on the topic for many years to come." Catherine Gidney, St Thomas University and author of A Long Eclipse: The Liberal Protestant Establishment and the Canadian University, 1920–1970