The Woman Question

After Where is Smith? The question I get asked most frequently (and normally slightly derisively) is Why are you going to an all women school?

For the most part, this question just irks me, because there is nothing wrong with going to an all women’s college. In fact, I have a small list of complaints about this question:

1. It implies that there is something wrong with all-female company/companionship
2. It comes across sounding ridiculously heteronormative
3. Smith is part of a consortium with co-ed schools. There will be guys on campus. Just not very many. This question assumes there aren’t any.
4. It implies I want/need to hang out with men, which I don’t. I’m not saying this because I’m a misandrist, in fact, the same works in reverse. I like hanging out with people. Women are people.

At the same time “Why a women’ college?” is a good question that many people considering a women’s college may ask at some time. Obviously, not all women would enjoy going to an all-women school. At first, I didn’t want to, either. I get it. Some people prefer hanging out with guys, or believe women are too dramatic, or they want to have wider, more accessible dating choices. There is nothing inherently wrong with this question, just the tone that it’s generally asked in.

And so, here is my list of reasons for choosing an all-women’s school (most of these are Smith specific):

1. Women’s colleges promote independence and confidence both in and outside of the classroom.  In a co-ed environment, female students are frequently overlooked, or marginalized in some way. Perhaps they aren’t called on as frequently as the male students, or maybe they just feel intimidated. Regardless, women’s schools are generally better at providing women the confidence and independence needed to achieve success in the “real world”, especially in male-dominated fields. Over 20% of Congresswomen graduated from a women’s college--which is impressive seeing as it’s somewhere between 1-2% of women who actually go to a women’s school. A similarly high percentage of women who have high-ranking jobs at Fortune 500 companies, or other male-dominated arenas have attended an all-female institution.
2. Smith’s community is amazing, and I do believe that part of that is due to it being an all-women’s institution. Smith, in particular, encourages “sisterhood”, in a sense, though that word may not be used in its official material. The housing at Smith is designed to foster a community--a family. Weekly tea parties are a tradition in each house on campus. Family-style dinners also happen frequently in the dining halls across campus. Smith also promotes diversity, which I believe is attributable to it being an all-women’s school (though this is not to say co-ed schools don’t promote diversity).
3. Feminism! When I visited Wellesley, one of the students there mentioned that she chose Wellesley over Smith, because it was “too intense”--she was referring to the feminism. This only made me like Smith more.
4. Smith/Northampton is very LGBT friendly. It wasn’t at the top of my list of qualities I sought in a school, but the accepting nature of the community is important to me.  There is definitely an “all Smithies are lesbians” stereotype, which is very much not true, but the fact that the community just accepts it, and doesn’t write-off lesbians as the “lavender menace” (well, at least not anymore--Betty Friedan is an alum of Smith), means a lot.

Ultimately, I chose Smith because I loved it from almost the moment I stepped on to campus. I was there for less than a day, and in that short period of time I already felt like the place had become home. Certainly there are objective benefits to it being all female, but those didn’t actually factor much into my decision. And so that’s another thing that irks me about the Why a women’s school? question.  You’re asking me the wrong question. It’s not Why a women’s school? it’s Why Smith?