Somerville College Oxford was once regarded as one of the best academic institutions in the country. It was also women-only. The only way you could (and can) study at Oxford University is through being accepted by a college, and the colleges in my day (1964-67) were all single sex--five female and thirty-odd male at that time. (I should explain that the Oxford system, for humanities and social sciences at least, involves university-provided lectures, which are 'mixed' and far from compulsory, and tutorials, at which the student reads a weekly essay to a tutor, often on her own and rarely with more than one other person present; these are compulsory. Degrees are awarded on the basis of final exams, university-wide, obviously 'mixed'.) In terms of the class of degree which the undergraduates earned, the women's colleges peformed, on average, far better than the men's. This was in part due to the fact that there was more competition for the many fewer places available to women. The men's colleges slowly but very surely started to admit women, and those colleges swiftly saw their academic performance thrive, as did their social life . On the other hand, the women's colleges found themselves less and less able to attract women of the ability and attitude which they had previously had no trouble at all getting. And so, with a lot of hoo-ha, protest and deep regret, Somerville at last caved in and started admitting men. Its academic performance has improved, but it is not as it was. There are many issues here, not least those about elite educational establishments, whatever their gender-admissions policies (although the English model is different here again-- it cost neither me nor my parents a penny for me to go there; all my tuition fees were paid, as they were for all the other British students, by the government, and I also had a state grant for my living costs which I had no difficulty living on). But there is also, and this is my point, something about the unwillingness of young women to forego the perceived opportunity, or excitement, or whatever it is, that they see in sharing academic as well as social life with men, despite the evidence that it is often not the best route for them. The argument seems to have been lost, until the next swing of the pendulum; but in the meantime, one way of characterizing what has happened is that, hardly for the first time, men's academic potential has been improved at the cost of women's. Given that, as Miguel points out, something had to give, the question remains whose sacrifice should be demanded (remembering that the young women concerned do not appear to think they have lost out). The answer may be obvious to an ecofem list, but that doesn't mean the answer is simple, or easy. Susan
