These statistics, of course, relate to women only; and, moreover, they are too incomplete to establish any general law; but they do permit the inference that college life confirms and improves the health of women; and that it does not disincline them to matrimony, or render them averse to or incapable of maternity and its consequent duties. In the absence of statistical data one can only consider the probabilities.
That a general impression that women were intellectually inferior to men formerly prevailed cannot be disputed.
If their work in co-educational colleges has (as, according to the testimony of their instructors, is the case) been, on an average, better than that of their male classmates, the young men who for four years have witnessed daily this exhibition of an intellectual vigor and interest equal to their own, will not be likely to entertain the doctrine of women’s natural and therefore necessary inferiority. The minds of the women in these colleges will be correspondingly affected; they will acquire a respect for themselves and for their sex greater than was formerly characteristic of women.
The intellectual association of men and women on a plane of accepted equality, begun in college, will continue after leaving it, and will modify the social life of every circle into which graduates of co-educational colleges enter.
These inferred effects of co-education are already visible in Western communities. Visitors from the Eastern States, and from over the sea, comment upon the relative absence of prudery among women and of false gallantry among men; they notice that sentimentality and condescension on the one hand, and affectation and soft flatteries on the other, are, to a degree, superseded by a mutual good understanding and respect.
Literary clubs, associations for the promotion of art and science, and committees engaged in philanthropy, are frequently composed of men and women; and the offices in these organizations are distributed between the two sexes in proportion to their respective representation in the membership. In communities where there are many graduates from co-educational colleges, one finds that societies of the kind above referred to have passed that transition state of mixed clubs, in which men always held the offices of president, secretary, and treasurer, while women held those of vice-president and corresponding secretary.
Men who have studied with women in college, almost invariably favor their admission to county and State, medical, legal, and editorial associations; and thus we already see that co-education prepares society to give women welcome and patronage in business and professional life.
The growth of this cordial recognition of equality, this bonhomie, has not, as it was feared would be the case, been accompanied by the decadence of man’s reverence for womanhood and woman’s admiration for manliness. Shrewd observers testify that both these sentiments apparently survive intellectual acquaintance, competition, and partnership; and that the former is expressed with more simplicity and the latter with more frankness than formerly, or than is still usual in sections of the country where co-education does not so generally exist.
But it is too soon for the final word on this subject to be spoken. Statisticians, sociologists, and novelists have much new work to do in recording the social consequences of co-education.