ABSTRACT
When Mary Belenky, Nancy Goldberger, Jill Tarule, and I began the project that led eventually to our book on Women’s Ways of Knowing (WWK, 1986/1997), we called it Education for Women’s Development. We set out to interview women varying widely in age, ethnicity, and social class, women who had attended or were attending a variety of educational institutions ranging from small, selective liberal arts colleges to inner city community colleges, as well as several “invisible colleges,” social agencies serving mothers of young children living in rural poverty. The question that guided our research continues to guide my research today. I like the way Mary Belenky words the question: “How come so many smart women feel so dumb?” Based on our own experiences in college and graduate school, and experiences recounted by our friends and our students, the four of us suspected that part of the answer might lie in the structure and practices of these educational institutions. Thus, we shared with earlier psychologists such as G.Stanley Hall a concern that higher education might be harmful to women’s health. Hall worried that college might shrink women’s wombs, rendering them infertile or “functionally castrated” (1917, p. 634); we worried that it might shrink their minds, or at least fail to expand them to their full potential.
