Continuing Education for Women
In 1960, a state-appointed committee conducted a study to measure the status of women's education within the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
The report showed that for all women over the age of 14 in Kentucky, the median (1/2 above, 1/2 below) number of school years completed was 9 years. This indicated that about 50% of Kentucky women had left school before age 16. The number of school years for African American women was slightly less…8.7 years, indicating that many women of color did not complete their first year of highschool. The study also found that women in Kentucky graduated from an insitution of higher education at a rate of 3 to 1 compared to men.
Mrs. Beulah Fontaine, the Kentucky Education Association’s consultant for professional services, commented on these disheartening numbers:
“Women are losing out....We are the richest country in the world. We have the brains. We have the Federal, state, and public scholarships and fellowships. A recent law enacted by Congress prohibits discrimination by employers on the basis of race, creed, color, age, and sex. This is the first time that we find sex included in areas where discrimination is forbidden. The Federal Government has taken the leadership, and voluntary action must follow. Our schools and colleges should recognize that women can fill the increasing demand for skilled manpower in our growing economy. And so should the women.”
The results of this study indicated women’s place in Kentucky and in society was changing. By the 1960s, although all could agree women’s roles were changing, few agreed on where or how the trajectory of that change should take place.
One way many believed women's opportunities could expand was via education. Administrators, faculty, and staff at University of Kentucky and in society at large agreed that women had enough talent and potential to make a program extending opportunity for a college education a possibility. The University of Kentucky came to play a leading role in assisting women who wanted to expand the opportunities available to them and redirect their destinies. But, the same questions surfaced in the 1960s that women had struggled for decades prior to answer: Did women need a different education? Or could their education be exactly same as men and be just as effective in preparing them for the workforce?
In 1966 the University of Kentucky initiated a program called "Continuing Education for Women" organized through the office of the Dean of Women. The program developed out of an understanding that Kentucky had a vast and untapped source of labor in the form of its under-utilized female talent and ambition - as indicated by the report above. The program also drew on a City University of New York (CUNY) study titled "The New Occupational Student: The Mature Adult Woman." Researchers found that the older American woman of the 1960s was in a position different from previous decades:
“The mature woman of today has vitality and relative freedom from the concentrated demands of the home. She wants to develop her talents, use her energies and be more fully engaged in the world of work."
But, the researchers also found that having been socialized to believe that the needs of others come before theirs, women often experienced both guilt and fear when they contemplated taking steps to enhance their career potential.
The study suggested that institutions of higher education, like the University of Kentucky, take steps to encourage women's decisions to further their education, including active recruitment of mature women (non-traditional aged college students); providing workshops, classes, and other information to women students to expand their awareness of career possibilities; and, crucially, by modifying their insitution's existing attitudes regarding the nature and variety of occupations "appropriate for women."
This last step was vital in encouraging Kentucky women to see an education at UK as a worthwhile and fruitful endeavor.
Early in the program's history, Continuing Education for Women consisted of a series of short courses specifically designed to refresh the math and writing skills of women. These condensed courses were often geared to help women re-enter college or graduate school after taking time off from school - usually to get married or raise young children.
The program also offered vocational testing and career guidance for Kentucky women who wanted to return to or enter the work force but were unsure of how to do so.
Eventually, however, the university expanded these relatively small and targeted skill-based courses to include Liberal Arts courses such as "Women and Contemporary Society" and "Women in Literature."
Despite the fact that the University was clearly interested in tapping into the potential of Kentucky women and higher education, the same Office of the Dean of Women still had strict behavior and dress code rules for its traditional college-aged female students.
For example, rules for campus etiquitte according to the "Co-Etiquitte Handbook" published by the UK Associated Women Students for the 1966-67 school year included no smoking and no public displays of affection. Women were also directed to avoid Bermuda shorts since they "are taboo" and to use a natural look in make-up and hair and to wear minimal jewelry. Male UK students did not have equally detailed rules for acceptable looks and behavior as UK students.
Society's toleration of the educated and even working women may have been progressing, but expectations for "appropriate" female behavior as contrasted with male behavior remained.
Although it was a product of the feminist and Women's Liberation Movement of the 1960s and 70s, UK's Continuing Education for Women program did not necessarily encourage radical change. In fact, the University sought to avoid threatening the traditional roles of women - primarily defined as homemakers and mothers - and instead sought to encourage women to expand and add to their already existing life styles.
In talking about her experience with UK's Continuing Education program, 31-year-old mother Juli Baker said that:
“I am not a woman dissatisfied and unfulfilled with the role of wife and mother. I thoroughly enjoy that role and have not compromised it in order to reach my other goal [returning to school for an Associate Degree in nursing]. However, I felt I was capable of handling my previous responsibilities as well as take on the responsibility of being a full-time student. And it is working out beautifully…”
The Continuing Education for Women program also recognized that not all women are the same, and that particular categories of Kentucky women would have different roadblocks while going back to school. Thus, the program developed academic support services such as "Project Ahead," aimed at identifying and targeting issues among Black adult women that would prevent them from succeeding academically at UK. Project Ahead found that services such as daycare and classes offered at later or earlier hours than traditional college classes could make a substantial difference in enabling mature African American women students to optimize their academic success--even if those services were under-publicized and underfunded.
