"Stalwart Women": A Historical Analysis of Deans of Women in the South

By Carolyn Terry Bashaw. New York: Teachers College Press, 1999. xv, 163 pp. $52.00 (doth). ISBN 0-8077-6300-4. $24.95 (paper). ISBN 0-8077-6299-7.

In the first half of the twentieth century, deans of women served as important agents of educational and social equity for female students, faculty, and staff. Carolyn Bashaw examines four white women who were important advocates for women on coeducational campuses in the South and were leaders in the professional development of the position of dean of women in the region and in the nation. She shows how these individuals were able to work with, around, and against gender concepts that limited women's access to higher education and professional employment.

The experiences of the deans examined by Bashaw are indicative of regional differences in higher education in the early twentieth century. Except for Katherine Bowersox, who became dean of women at Berea College in Kentucky in 1907, the southern deans-Sarah Blanding at the University of Kentucky, Agnes Harris at The University of Alabama, and Adele Stamp at the University of Maryland-acquired their positions several decades after their counterparts in the Midwest.

Except for Stamp, who received her B.A. from Sophie Newcomb College, these southern deans attended normal colleges, not private women's colleges, and none had the family and professional connections and economic wherewithal of their northern counterparts. Indeed, the adjective Bashaw uses repeatedly in describing them is "marginal." They engaged in social service to their communities before assuming their positions as deans, they were employed at non-elite institutions with few economic resources, and they often lived literally on the fringes of the campus in boarding houses or women's dormitories. Because of economic hardships, they often found it difficult to travel to professional conferences and to participate in professional organizations.

Given these factors, it should not be surprising that southern representation in the National Association of Deans of Women (NADW) was relatively low in the years before World War II. Bashaw estimates that only about 14 percent of the membership came from white southern colleges and universities; less than half a percent from black institutions. These numbers make the leadership of Harris and Blanding in the national organization even more impressive. Elected president of the NADW in 1932, Harris was the first to come from a public coeducational college in the South. Blanding followed in 1939. Assuming the presidency during the Great Depression was not exactly a boon. The profession was threatened by the reduction of salaries and staffs, which affected faculty and administrators alike during the 1930s.

Because they did not represent elite institutions or come from wealthy industrial states, Harris and Blanding were sensitive to the needs of individuals who lived on the "edges." And because the NADW meetings were often their only opportunities to come together to discuss their interests and concerns, the southern deans wanted the organization to envelope a wide range of institutions (including black colleges) from diverse sections of the country. Although deans of women were originally envisioned as matrons responsible for their wards' social welfare, through their work with the NADW they expanded their responsibilities to include the academic and professional interests of all women on co-educational campuses-students, faculty, and staff alike.

Ironically, the very professionalism that legitimated the office of the dean of women also brought about its demise. Beginning in the 1940s, the various responsibilities of deans-for housing, for social organizations, for academic advising, for personal and career counseling-were delegated to individual professionals and placed under the administration of a dean of students, usually a man. The academic province of the dean of women was reduced and her responsibilities confined to social regulations. This "demotion" is what led Harris to resign her position at the University of Alabama in 1945.

Bashaw's examination of the contributions of these "stalwart women" to women's integration into the academy should be of interest to historians of education, of women, and of the South. As Linda Eisenmann writes in the foreword, "this analysis of women removed from the center impressively extends our understanding of women leaders throughout higher education" (p. x).

AMY THOMPSON MCCANDLESS

College of Charleston

Copyright University of Alabama Press Jan 2003
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