Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Women's education in the 1950s


In the 1950s education played a huge role in gender construction, as the ratio of men to women going to college was 9:1. The number of women attending college was low because many women married soon after high school and for those who did pursue a college education eventually dropped out because they got married and even after they graduated from college many women did not obtain jobs because they planned to live as housewives.
Female students would take special courses that prepared them for home life such as cooking class, interior decoration and family finance. Many 1950s women looked at college as a good place to find a spouse. Many women attended colleges near men colleges where their main goal was to marry one of these men before they graduated.

Many women did not make it to college because in high school they were taking many home education courses in which would prepare them to be good housewives.  For example, if you click on this link:http://www.snopes.com/language/document/goodwife.asp you will find a list of ten steps on how to be a good wife found in a 1950s high school textbook. Basically, women were to taught to attend their husbands every need and facilitate their husbands lives in every way possible such as minimizing the noise in the house while he is at home and having dinner prepared before he arrives from work. Therefore, women were expected and encouraged before they even considered attending college to become housewives.


The film, Mona Lisa smile, accurately portrays the roles that college educated women were expected to fill in the 1950s. The film takes place in one of the most prestigious women’s college, Wellesley, where a feminist-liberal professor attempts to teach conservative 1950 Wellesley students to question their traditional societal roles. The film does this by depicting examples of how an educational institution like Wellesley allowed married students to take days off schools so they could attend their marital duties at home and how many students were expected to be married before and after graduation. Many of the women in this film married men who attended neighboring colleges and took many home education courses where they were taught how to be good housewives.

Above I have attached a video from the film, Mona Lisa Smile, portraying the societal roles that college students from Wellesley were expected to fill. 


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