How were your own college decisions impacted by your gender? Do you view that situation differently now than you did at the time?

Up until the late 1960s and early 1970s, many top colleges banned women students. Cultural and family values also affected women's college choice. How were your own college decisions impacted by your gender? Do you view that situation differently now than you did at the time?

My parents encouraged me to follow a career as a secretary or nurse in 1966. They did not encourage exploration of any other options. As a sophomore at Miami University, in Ohio, I was one of 2 women in my accounting class. The grad student teacher told the whole class that women had no business being in this class! When I asked for extra help after class I was again discouraged by this grad student. It did not deter me at all; however, I did struggle with this subject when I had a 4.0 in all other subjects. I attribute that struggle to lack of teacher support. Today I believe women can pursue any career and if they encounter opposition they can easily find support to overcome most obstacles. I never let any gender based work situations bother me except certain sex-based harassment situations I encountered. I even went fishing with the guys I worked with as a young manager!

When I was a girl, I thought that most women were teachers, or typists, like my mom. I thought I'd be a teacher, too, although a stint teaching at my church's Sunday School showed me that it was not for me. Then in high school I got a job in my local library and realized that that was my place. But I NEVER thought once about doing anything in science or math.

Growing up it was assumed I'd go to college and I don't remember there being any obvious or subtle suggestions that I follow a certain path because I was female. The one exception was from one male friend of my dad's, who, being told I was going to college, asked if I as going to get my MRS degree. I had no idea what he was talking about until someone explained that he was saying I was going to college to get a husband. I thought at the time that it sounded like a lot of effort and money to get a man.

I don't think my gender played any role in my school decisions. I don't really know if my parents thought it was appropriate for me and my younger sister to go to college, but they definitely didn't discourage it. Of course, it was clear from the outset that if we wanted to go to college we'd have to pay for it ourselves, which we did, through a combination of grants, scholarships, work and loans. I do wish they'd weighed in on my choice of subject. I ended up with a music degree. I did also end up with an MRS, a term I was familiar with, but married another poor, unemployed musician.

I was highly encouraged to go to college. In my mom’s era, college for women was frowned upon. My grandfather felt that graduating from high school was good enough and now it was time to work!!
So it was a given, I would go to college. However in the 60s, it was accepted that you became a teacher nurse or secretary. I became a teacher and luckily I loved my choice. It was hard going if u chose a different path that was predominantly meant for males!! So many kudos who went against system and became doctors lawyers financial consultants business owners!!

It was expected that I attend college (late 80's). One of my parents would be graduating from college the year after my high school graduation and attending graduate school. I think my looking at schools got mixed up with my parent's search for schools. I don't remember a lot of career advice or suggestions either. So my college decisions were less about gender and more about less direction than I really needed at the time and not really knowing who I was as a person or what I truly loved.

I was excellent in math, and interested in premed. Graduating in 1968, I was never counselled into any career that wasn't nursing or teaching, and family expected me to go "husband shopping". I never even knew what engineering was! But I wanted to get away from home so I applied to affordable schools, which at the time were in the South. Attended NCSU in Raleigh, which at the time had no sororities and only one small dorm for women. Tight curfews for women; none for men. Was involved in establishing the first sorority on campus, but the vietnam war demonstrations, civil rights movement, and feminism, levelled playing field by the time I left.

I had to drop out of college when I got divorced, or the judge would have given custody of my children to my husband. Because if I was going to school, I was gone too much. They never would have told a man that or considered his job taking him away from home every day as a problem.

As a male, I think I might look at this question from a different angle. When I got to college in 1984, I remember being shocked by the statistics of sexual assault. Sexual harassment was still not something that we heard about statistically, but we saw evidence of it on a regular basis. I was always aware of where my female friends were and made sure that either I or one of our other male friends were available to walk with them wherever they needed to go, but I know for a fact that my perspective on this definitely changed when my own daughter was getting ready to go to college more than 40 years after these women blazed the trail. At various points of the book, I wondered how their parents handled the stress.

And in response to the last question, I wondered how in the world could the faculty and leadership have tolerated the treatment of these women--many of them must have had daughters! The sexual assault, the lack of basic protection in the dorm. As women, we kept so quiet about these indignities. I wonder if those experiences are how we became such helicopter parents. We were so unprotected; our voices never heard. So when my children went through school and then college, I was always foisting my opinion on the leadership. There was no way, my daughter was going to be unprotected in college. And if she wasn't I called the Dean. And when my son ran into bullying at his college, I was on top of university leadership immediately. So I've come to the realization just now, that all of our hyper oversight of our children was a result of these indignities faced by these women.

Having gone to college in the early 2000s I obviously had a completely different experience ... the world was my oyster. However, I can say that my grandmother has complained bitterly over the years. She graduated high school in 1959 and she eventually became a teacher. She said her choices were basically to go into education, nursing or become a secretary. That was it. She always said she would have loved to have gone into police detective work, but that was simply not available for her. Even my mother, who went to college in the early 80s said it was still somewhat frowned upon for women to go into certain jobs.

I went to a public all-girls high school where attendance was based on IQ. The Vice Principal was active in helping those girls who were at the top of the class get into top colleges. Attending an Ivy League men’s college like Yale wasn’t a possibility, so I attended Wellesley, one of the Seven Sisters colleges (Smith, Mt. Holyoke, Vassar, Pembroke, Radcliffe, Bryn Mawr, and Wellesley). Hillary Rodham Clinton was a member of our class, the class of 1969. She went on to Yale Law School. Many who entered a Seven Sisters college were in search of a well-to-do husband but left as avid feminists and protestors. Many young women in our class went on to law school and medical school. I got my M.A. and M.Phil. from Columbia. Perhaps we had more opportunities after college than college graduates before us because 1969 was such a happening year across the country. I was able to attend both Wellesley and Columbia only because I earned full scholarships.

I sometimes think about all the bright women my age who were not able to go to college because their families couldn’t afford it and/or couldn’t maneuver the financial aid process