Attainment, Graduate Degree

History of Women in Education

Women have and continue to work hard for equal consideration with men. Prior to the 1900s, women known to achieve graduate degrees are few in example. This time is highlighted by individual firsts for women. A number of women represent the first women to attain various graduate degrees in the United States. Elizabeth Blackwell was the first American woman to achieve a graduate degree in medicine in 1849. Fifteen years later, Rebecca Crumpler was the first black woman to achieve this same degree. Lucy Hobbs was the first female dentist. While Arabella Mansfield was the first woman to practice law in Iowa, Ada Kepley was the first to graduate from law school in 1869. While these examples of firsts for women are important, they did little at the time to create true change for women in the United States or the world. Real societal change for women, however, can be attributed to several key events of the 1900s: the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1921, the civil rights movement of the 1960s, World War II, and the equal rights movement.

The Nineteenth Amendment gave women of the United States the right to vote. During the civil rights movement, minorities fought for the equality denied to them since the Civil War. World War II provided women with an opportunity to do their part in support of the war by going to work in jobs vacated by the soldiers and gave women the opportunity to see themselves in roles other than wife, mother, teacher, or nurse. The equal rights movement allowed women's voices to be heard with regard to equal pay for equal work and also ensured that women were given equal opportunities for work as men. These events gave an increasing number of women an entrée into educational institutions and degree programs that were male dominated. While women in the United States were making some headway, it would be many years before women in many countries outside the United States began to make the same strides in their education goals as well as in employment.

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