"Has Nothing Changed in a Hundred Years?": The Salience of Gender to the Undergraduate ExperienceGender and Higher Education in the Progressive Era. Lynn D. GordonEducated in Romance: Women, Achievement, and College Culture. Dorothy C. Holland , Margaret A. Eisenhart

Abstract

The nineteenth-century furor over whether women could or should undertake higher education has a quaint ring to it today when more than 51 percent of undergraduates are women. Surely, the reader may ask, the study of gender in higher education can have only an antiquarian appeal now? Not so, argue the authors of these two books: today, as in the past, gender identity entails different experiences for men and women students in American higher education, and gender is still a powerful force not only in determining people's roles in society but also in shaping the work of colleges and universities. Lynn D. Gordon's book is a historical exploration of women students' experiences during the Progressive Era (1880-1920) at the University of California, the University of Chicago (Illinois), Vassar College (New York), Agnes Scott College (Georgia), and Sophie Newcomb College (Louisiana). To enrich the interpretation of her data, drawn from institutional and alumnae records, college and student newspapers, and fiction written by students of the period, Gordon uses current interpretations of women's history. She argues that women students created a culture of their own within the culture of male higher education. This culture included social activities with careful regulation of behavior; rituals; and societies for discussing and debating literature, foreign languages and cultures, and political and social issues. At