<p>[On</a> Leadership Panelists: Are Women’s Colleges Still Needed? - Selena Rezvani](<a href=“http://views.washingtonpost.com/leadership/panelists/2010/09/are-womens-colleges-still-needed.html?hpid=smartliving]On”>http://views.washingtonpost.com/leadership/panelists/2010/09/are-womens-colleges-still-needed.html?hpid=smartliving) </p>
<p>Are Women’s Colleges Still Needed?</p>
<p>As an undergraduate at NYU, I was always curious about the intellectual sisterhood uptown, otherwise known as Barnard College*students. The women’s-only correlate to Columbia University, like many others of its ilk, has graduated several notable women and boasts a platinum academic track record. </p>
<p>As is the case with all “seven sisters,” Barnard also has a mysterious air about it. Are its students drawn to the school because it’s renowned academically and happens to be all female―or because it’s a women’s-only college that just happens to be excellent academically? Is it the balance and exact combination of the two that magnetizes others? If you ask graduates of such programs why they attended, you will hear an assortment of answers.</p>
<p>With only two percent of college graduates attending women’s colleges, the decision to select a single sex institution has never been more intriguing. In the year 2010, when more college graduates are female than male―and when our workforce is more gender mixed than ever before―the question of relevance naturally emerges. Certainly the number of national single sex colleges has dwindled, with a diminutive 60 female colleges operating today. Numerous schools have opted to become co-educational for the sheer sake of increased economic reach. Others have grappled with the decision, and as was the case with California’s<em>Mills College, converted from all female to co-educational only to later reverse their decision.
Doubters of women’s colleges will inevitably ask how such schools can prepare women―in a female only environment―to navigate a coed world. The findings, from not one or two, but several studies, show that women’s colleges actually do it quite well. According to a multi-year study by</em>Hardwick Day, alumni of women’s colleges are more likely than all other graduates to serve in a leadership role within their undergraduate college or university.
What’s more, while women’s college graduates make up only a small minority of the college-educated population, one-third of the women board members of the Fortune 1000 companies are women’s college graduates, and women’s college graduates are twice as likely to earn Ph.D.s., more often going on to study the sciences and attend medical school. Of Business Week’s list of rising women stars in corporate America, 30 percent are women’s college graduates and of women members of Congress, 20 percent attended women’s colleges.
Even the biggest skeptics have to recognize a compelling case in these numbers. Colleges that have long catered to both genders are seeing the value in creating mini women’s colleges internally. Just this spring, I presented a workshop to Duke University’s*Baldwin Scholars program, a 4-year initiative where 18 women are selected each year to be mentored, attend academic seminars, and are given the opportunity to live together as a group on campus. The scholars are also expected to partake in an internship, community service, and lectures that will develop leadership, critical thinking and problem-solving skills. As part of their membership, the women are expected to positively influence the culture for other women at Duke. Many other schools have created women-centric programming, among them UCLA, Northwestern, and Babson College.</p>
<p>I sat down with Tracey Rodriquez, a recent college graduate, who attended a large co-ed state university, a co-ed community college, as well as a women’s college (Mills College). She contrasted several differences in her experience: “Mills was by far the most rigorous. The opportunities to get involved and assume leadership roles were frequent. By removing the competitive element between women, it freed up so much energy to focus on learning. With the help of fellow classmates, I produced some of the best projects of my life… Mills, I found, was very meritocratic.” Rodriguez’s experience highlights some clear benefits. There’s also the effect of having more female role models, more faculty interaction, and more time to focus on academic endeavors.</p>
<p>But there’s another less talked about advantage to these schools. Said Madeline Albright in a commencement speech at Wellesley, “…We sometimes misunderstand what leadership really is. We expect it to come from the outside. And so we wait and listen for the sound of some mighty voice coming out of a loud speaker. But real leadership comes from the quiet nudging of an inner voice. It comes from realizing…that the time has come to move beyond preparing to doing.”</p>
<p>Albright scratches at what is perhaps the most important aspect of a single sex education: self agency. Social psychologists refer to this as one’s “locus on control,” or the extent to which we believe we can affect the forces around us. Girls are largely reared to believe that their locus of control sits outside of them (think “Someday your prince will come”), while boys are typically taught that their locus of control resides within them. Consider the commonalities in stories like Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Snow White. You’ll find that all of these stories depict women facing dire straits from which they can’t save themselves. Men dash in, rescuing these women from harm, which is the key to the women’s lives moving happily forward.
When one studies in an all female environment, there is less reliance on someone sailing in and fixing everything. Women are not waiting to be saved, believing that outer forces will help them, rather they are steering the ship, making cause and effect moves that actively sculpt their lives. Is it any wonder then that women’s college graduates have developed a self reliance that serves them time and again in their careers?</p>
<p>Make no mistake women’s colleges are far from perfect. There’s the matter that they may not be involving enough of the very people who could help move the needle around gender issues: men. What’s more, perhaps separating women from men while learning puts a band-aid on a larger, societal issue. There’s also something of an image problem that may threaten the sustainability of these institutions.
Even so, women’s colleges are not pass</p>