Why Sex Segregation is Totally Awesome

[dairyfreelife]

Here's the thing (and part of why I chose a women's college): men and women having to learn to get along and deal with each other often turns into women having to make concessions to patriarchal culture. In coeducational classrooms, it's been pretty established that there's often inherent bias towards male students and that women in a coeducational environment often fall victim to stereotype threat and let men lead while taking a more passive role. Women in single-sex institutions are also more likely to pursue traditionally male-dominated fields; my school produces more female chemists than any other college in the country -- not more than any other women's school but more, period. In a women's college, almost all leadership roles (save for female-to-male or genderqueer students) are taken by women. Discussions are driven by women and bias is at least somewhat tempered. In a University of Essex study, undergrads were divided into coed, all-male, and all-female classes. Male students did fine in either environment. Women in all-female classes had grades an average of 7.5% higher. 3% of women graduating high school go onto women's school's; 30% of congresswomen and 20% of female CEOs attended a women's college.

I don't know anyone who selected a women's college because they thought it would keep them safe, for the record. Male guests are also a significant presence on-campus and I'd say most of the women on this campus are, at some point, involved in romantic/sexual relations.

TL;DR -- it's not that they're safer or they're going to contain women. It's that they give women advantages that are harder to find in a coed environment.

Also, I don't want to insult any student/graduates of coed institutions. This is simply a remark on why same-sex education, especially for women, is still valid and acceptable.

I'm sorry, but I have never experienced the type of classroom you claim happen in coed. I have not experienced a classroom where men took leader roles while women took a backseat. Just as many girls were leaders as were boys and just as many boys took more passive roles. I've seen more boys putting "weaker" (more passive) boys down and "in their place" than I've seen boys putting girls "in their place". In fact some of the most outspoken teens I've come across were women.

I don't believe I was at a disadvantage because I went to coed schools and have only ever been in coed classrooms. I've been trying to do nuclear medicine tech now. I think it's more society than schools that pressure women to stay away from computer, tech and engineering fields and men to stay away from nursing and education. Most teachers and even professors try to encourage men and women to go into any field they like. Most men and women I know see nothing wrong with a man in teaching or a woman in engineering, yet so few still pursue those careers. I don't think it's coed classes that cause that, but society as a whole. With time, I think we'll start seeing less and less gender disparity. More and more women and men are encouraged to step outside their gender "roles" and do a career they want. There were a few men in my elementary education classes. It was still mostly women, but some men are deciding to go for a traditionally female occupation and it's the same for women in science fields. More and more I've seen women decided to pursue those jobs.

I still don't think it's for the benefit of society to segregate gender. I don't want any possible children I have to be segregated by their gender in school. It's only the past 100 years that men and women were allowed to be educated together. Men and women were separated to begin with in schools. I want my children to experience diverse groups of people. I want them to know and work with people of either gender, of all races and cultures and backgrounds and socio-economic classes.

And if 30% of congresswomen went to womens colleges, the other 70% did not and if 20% of female CEOs went to womens colleges, the other 80% did not.

It's fine if you wanted a female only college. However, it comes across as if you think your education is superior to women who went to coed schools. I think my education was actually quite nice. If someone feels single gender school is best for them, that's great, but don't knock coeducational schools. They are just as great.

[Childless]

I'm sorry, but I have never experienced the type of classroom you claim happen in coed. I have not experienced a classroom where men took leader roles while women took a backseat. Just as many girls were leaders as were boys and just as many boys took more passive roles. I've seen more boys putting "weaker" (more passive) boys down and "in their place" than I've seen boys putting girls "in their place". In fact some of the most outspoken teens I've come across were women.

I don't believe I was at a disadvantage because I went to coed schools and have only ever been in coed classrooms. I've been trying to do nuclear medicine tech now. I think it's more society than schools that pressure women to stay away from computer, tech and engineering fields and men to stay away from nursing and education. Most teachers and even professors try to encourage men and women to go into any field they like. Most men and women I know see nothing wrong with a man in teaching or a woman in engineering, yet so few still pursue those careers. I don't think it's coed classes that cause that, but society as a whole. With time, I think we'll start seeing less and less gender disparity. More and more women and men are encouraged to step outside their gender "roles" and do a career they want. There were a few men in my elementary education classes. It was still mostly women, but some men are deciding to go for a traditionally female occupation and it's the same for women in science fields. More and more I've seen women decided to pursue those jobs.

I still don't think it's for the benefit of society to segregate gender. I don't want any possible children I have to be segregated by their gender in school. It's only the past 100 years that men and women were allowed to be educated together. Men and women were separated to begin with in schools. I want my children to experience diverse groups of people. I want them to know and work with people of either gender, of all races and cultures and backgrounds and socio-economic classes.

And if 30% of congresswomen went to womens colleges, the other 70% did not and if 20% of female CEOs went to womens colleges, the other 80% did not.

It's fine if you wanted a female only college. However, it comes across as if you think your education is superior to women who went to coed schools. I think my education was actually quite nice. If someone feels single gender school is best for them, that's great, but don't knock coeducational schools. They are just as great.

I'm going to have to side with dairyfreelife on this one. I went to a co-ed college and majored in a heavily male-dominated field. I'm beyond glad that I decided to go to a co-ed school. 95% of my office is male. I work well with all of them and I feel that's due in large part to working/studying with men while in college. I was incredibly shy when I graduated from high school and especially so around men. I just had no clue how to interact with them. College taught me how to do exactly that and I don't think I would have done nearly as well in my career if I hadn't had those 4 years of practice.

[Gil]

@Dairyfreelife: We may be miscommunicating on some level. I have no issue with coed schools and applied to several -- but I do have strong reasons for preferring women's school as my choice based on my values. On the other hand, it feels to me like you're disparaging women's colleges, as you've said we're of no benefit to society and implied that we aren't learning "diversity" because we're a women's college. We're probably talking past each other, so I'll say it outright: I have no problems with coed institutions, but I think women's-only education is still extremely beneficial.

Since you're on freejinger (and maybe this is an assumption, correct me), I'm assuming that you're aware of patriarchy and bias in the greater world. I'm not sure why you'd believe that those issues disappear once you step on campus. Society and schools are not separate; if you think society as a whole pressures women not to pursue areas of study and research, I think you're going to find the same problems in schools.

At the 50 top colleges in the country (and it's unclear whether or not this includes the multiple women's colleges in the top 50), less than a third of the student governments are led by women. This despite the fact that most liberal arts colleges are women-dominated. The bias against women in STEM fields has not been closed. 43% of college physics departments have no female staff. 12% of physics faculty are female, 17% of astronomy faculty are female. There is still faculty bias against female students in science at research institutions, resulting in less support for those students. In elementary and secondary education more attention is consistently given to male students and I'd be bowled over if that pattern stopped at the doors of a college. Even if you claim that disparity is decreasing, the rates of women pursuing engineering has significantly decreased. And men do participate more in college classrooms. They have been shown to speak two and a half times longer than female students and, notably, women spoke three times more than usual when they had a female professor/role model in the classroom.

Closing your eyes and saying there's no gender bias in educational environments is, I think, a really regrettable error to make. Saying that there's no difference between males and females in a classroom is, I think, patently untrue, even if it seems that way through your experience.

I don't think total gender segregation solves anything. That being said, I'm really glad that the above doesn't substantially affect my education.

@Childless: I hear that kind of thing a lot. We're not nunneries, though -- there are male faculty, male guests, male students from other schools, and transmen on our own campuses. It sounds like coed education gave you something really helpful and that's great, but you don't necessarily not learn how to interact with men (or unlearn) just because you're on a women's campus.