This weekend, the University commemorated the 30th anniversary of the merger of the Woman's College and Trinity College, providing the Duke community an opportunity to reflect upon the progress toward gender equity that has been made at the University and the work that remains to be done in order to ensure equity between the sexes.
During its 42-year existence, the Woman's College provided women with an opportunity to attain an excellent higher education at a time when many top institutions did not provide avenues for women's education. This was provided for by a visionary bequest from Washington B. Duke, who recognized the need for female education.
The 1972 merger of Trinity College and the Woman's College has obviously led to huge benefits for women and men, giving women an equal footing with men and placing them in direct competition with one another, showing that women are every bit as capable as men.
Additionally, the social benefits of men and women not only taking classes but also living together far outweigh the potential benefits from single-sex education.
Equally as important as the educational opportunities that the Woman's College provided were the extracurricular and leadership positions that the separate administrative structure allowed women to hold.
One negative aspect of the merger between the Woman's College and Trinity College is that it may have deprived women of the opportunity to serve in leadership positions that, to this day, are still dominated by men. Although women have made tremendous strides towards equality, with some recent Duke Student Government presidents being female, for example, there is still more work to do in order to balance the field between men and women and their access to leadership roles.
Additionally, as President Nan Keohane pointed out in her opening speech for the celebration Saturday morning, integrating men and women has placed new pressures on women , such as sexual pressures and pressures about how women should look and what fields they should enter into.
These types of problems must be addressed by the University community today. Thirty years ago, Duke took a large step toward gender equity by merging the Woman's College with the formerly all-male Trinity College.
Today, the University and Keohane are trying to take a similar step by refocusing the community's attention open issues of the importance gender through Duke Inquiries on Gender and other efforts of the president and her deans.
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