A Fair Chance For the Girls": Discourse On Women's Health and Higher Education in Late 19th Century America

• In Event: 73.024 - Reifying and Redefining Gender Roles in Higher Education and Beyond

Abstract

In late 19th century America, medical experts argued against the higher education of women, claiming that it was detrimental to women’s health. By exploring the often-neglected story of how the ACA took science into their own hands in order to measure the effects of higher education on women’s health, this study provides a counter narrative to the predominant perspective presented by historians of education, that is, a perspective that focuses almost exclusively on literature that was being produced by the male-dominated medical community. This study also contributes to feminist scholarship on women and education as well as our knowledge of the intersections of gender, medical science, and education reform as it relates to the historical as well as present-day context.

Author

• Tiffany Lee Tsang, University of California - Los Angeles