Inclusive Gender Policy Right Track for Colleges

A teenager’s applications to several women-only colleges are rejected because her high school transcript identified her as male. 

This is a real possibility for students who have made or are making a gender transition as they seek college admission.

 In 2014, Mills College became the first women-only institution to announce an inclusive transgender admission policy, according to HereMedia. Over the following 2 years, several other colleges, including Smith and Mt. Holyoke, also broadened their admission policies to include “self-identified” females.

“The education of transgender and gender fluid students seems a logical and natural fit for women’s colleges of the 21st century,” said the Report on Inclusion of Transgender and Gender Fluid Students made in 2013 by the Gender Identity and Expression Sub-Committee of the Diversity and Social Justice Committee at Mills College. This statement indicated that students who consider themselves to be female, whether it be by birth or by decision, have a place in the women’s college environment.

Admission policy changes have not yet been implemented in the private women’s college community, however changes to the concept of what it means to be an exclusively female school are being discussed across the country as gender equality gains traction. As gender on these campuses becomes more fluid, so does the rigid concept of single gender educational institutions. Women’s colleges of today need to broaden their concept of what is “female” to remain effective as progressive educational institutions.

America has a long history of exclusively female academic establishments. During the 1700’s, seminaries were schools meant to teach the female vocational skills of the time, namely teaching. Later on, some women’s colleges adjusted their focus to offering a chance at higher education in a country where college students were predominantly male.

Early schools such as Litchfield Academy insisted that women were of equal intellectual capacity as men, and Wesleyan College strove to increase the number of women earning degrees. Promoting equal educational opportunity has remained a mission for women’s colleges into the modern era. However, female institutions today need to realize that their single gender policy has begun to detract from true educational equity.

To their credit, women’s colleges have made huge leaps in strengthening the number of women pursuing higher education, but only a handful of single gender colleges today are willing to accept transgender students. This seems counter to a school type originally created to combat sex discrimination.

Many women’s colleges that pride themselves on empowerment and accessibility to minority students still reveal a limit to their social progressivism in who they admit. The 2 gender concept is being overturned and women’s educational institutions need to move past gender bias in their student body.

The handful of women’s colleges that have publicly announced that they will not reject applications of self identified females have set an example for other institutions. Just last year Simmons stated in their mission that they support “a full range of gender identity and expression” and Wellesley accepts applications based on an whether an individual identifies as a woman. These are significant improvements for gender equality in education, but the vast majority of single gender schools have a long road of adjustment ahead of them.

Women’s educational institutions that wish their students to be effective, wise leaders of the future must set the example today. Accepting that gender exists on a broad spectrum is a step in the right direction.