Women's Education In Early Colonial America

Throughout the greater history of America, spanning from its European roots into and throughout the early colonial era, the woman’s place had always been in her husband’s home, where she would carry out a list of tasks and tend to her children in order to be considered useful. In these times, man would never have entertained the thought of training her faculty with the tools gained from higher education; to send the woman to college was to waste their resources on an intellectually inferior creature. These beliefs pervaded the American popular opinion with little resistance up until the Age of Enlightenment. After the Revolutionary War, and even later with the Civil War, the people began to reshape and break their social constructs. Women, in their climb towards equality, could began their access the university. Throughout the nineteenth and early …show more content…
No longer was all of national opinion against women’s education. It took decades, but women’s education movement gradually earned access to universities and began to transform American traditional gender roles. As the New York Times published, “With new dangers and duties, new powers and opportunities are undoubtedly in store for them.” There was still much work to be done, but this advancement made great headway in the fight for women’s rights. In contrast, while negative opinions would gradually die down and the movement’s flaws would eventually be ameliorated, they still cannot be overlooked. Throughout the women’s movement for higher education, many forms of women’s education were ineffective, and the negative opinions of the status quo would run rampant throughout the