CLINTON, S.C. (courtesy presby.edu) — Presbyterian College’s first female president shared women’s struggles to find their place in higher education during an inspirational speech March 6 in honor of Women’s History Month.
In her lecture, “Boisterous and Bold: Women in Higher Education,” Dr. Anita Gustafson, the 20th president of PC, began by noting her own place in the college’s 144-year history.
“I’m really honored and excited to be the first woman president of Presbyterian College,” she said. “In all honesty, though, I don’t think about it on a daily basis. I just try to do my job. I just do the work that’s before me. But I do think it’s important to reflect on the historical journey women have had in higher education because it’s not that long ago that it would have been unthinkable for a woman to have had this opportunity. So, I do want to be very critical for the pathway of the women who have come before me – who have paved the way for me.”
Gustafson began with the inspiration for her speech’s title, which emerged from the early 20th-century debate in Virginia on allowing women to be admitted to the University of Virginia. Opponents, she said, claimed – in the negative – that educated women would be “boisterous and bold.”
“I think the real issue with women getting into higher education – getting a college education – was the basic problem of an educated woman, which was educated for what?” she said. “What was the ultimate purpose of her education?”
Gustafson said that in the republic’s early days, educational opportunities were limited to white women from property-owning families whose husbands and sons were eligible to vote. Another argument in favor of educating women was that they should learn domestic arts and how to create a strong home environment.
“This was the argument for educating middle-class white women in the early 19th century,” she said. “Any educational opportunity that might break women out of that domestic sphere was seen by critics as dangerous to the very fabric of society.”
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