A WOMAN’S WORLD WHY WOMEN’S COLLEGES ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER BY | ELLEN HUNTER GANS ’05
H
ow many of us had an exchange like this one with quasi-baffled relatives, high school teachers or friends: “I’m going to enroll at Saint Ben’s.” “Isn’t that a women’s campus? Why would you want to live with all women?” For many of us, the instinct was to point to the partnership with Saint John’s. “There are men up the road! There are men in our classes! There’s even a bus!”
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And of course, that partnership is an important part of the Saint Ben’s experience. But what about our identity as a college for women? For those of you who elevated this exchange by emphasizing the critical role of a women’s college, you may well have been met with blank stares. And those blank stares are easily forgiven, especially now, in 2021, when our collective understanding of things like the gender spectrum, identities and roles have evolved since I first had exchanges like the one above 20 years ago.
