Ohio History Journal

PATRICK F. CALLAHAN

 

Women, Higher Education, and the Home

Front: Women Students at the University

of Cincinnati during World War II

 

 

 

As the University of Cincinnati marked the first anniversary of the attack

on Pearl Harbor, Dean of Women Katherine Ingle told the women students

assembled at the Women's Convocation that "We are surrounded by danger

but there is also opportunity, opportunity such as has come to no other gen-

eration of women, to no other race of women...."1    Ingle foresaw the com-

ing decade as a period when the only "trained brains," in virtually all fields,

would be women and anticipated that the massive shift in the gender compo-

sition of the nation's universities caused by World War II would revolutionize

women's roles in higher education and society.2

Ingle's prediction foreshadowed a broader debate among historians concern-

ing the impact of the war on the status of women in American society.

Some historians argue that the war was a turning point in regard to economic

and social equality for women and that the rise of second-wave feminism in

the 1960s and 1970s had its roots in wartime changes. Others contend that it

led to few enduring economic and attitudinal transformations regarding

women, and that wartime changes were "for the duration" only and accom-

plished in ways that did not challenge basic assumptions about gender roles.³

The literature is voluminous but most of it concerns women in the work

place. Relatively little attention has been paid to the impact of the war on

 

 

Patrick F. Callahan is Assistant Dean for Library Technical Services at St. John's University

in Jamaica, New York. He is also a doctoral candidate in U.S. history at the University of

Cincinnati.

1. News Record, Dec. 12, 1942.

2. The phrase "trained brains" was coined by Virginia Gildersleeve, Dean of Barnard

College, in an article in New York Times Magazine, May 29, 1942, p. 18, and was widely re-

peated by educators.

3. William Henry Chafe, The American Woman: Her Changing Social, Economic, and

Political Roles, 1920-1970 (New York, 1972) and Sherna Berger Gluck, Rosie the Riveter

Revisited: Women, the War, and Social Change (New York, 1987) stress the transformations

caused by the war. Leila Rupp in Mobilizing Women for War: German and American

Propaganda, 1939-1945 (Princeton, 1978), D'Ann Campbell in Women at War with America:

Private Lives in a Patriotic Era (Cambridge, Mass., 1984), Karen Anderson, Wartime Women:

Sex Roles, Family Relations, and the Status of Women During World War II (Westport, Conn.,

1981), and Susan M. Hartmann, The Home Front and Beyond: American Women in the 1940s

(Boston, 1982) stress the limits of wartime changes.

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40                                                               OHIO HISTORY

 

women in higher education despite the fact that it was primarily college-edu-

cated women who led the women's rights movement.⁴ Indeed, the experi-

ences of women at individual universities, particularly coeducational ones,

have largely been ignored.⁵ Particularly lacking has been an attempt to elicit

the reactions of the women students themselves.

This paper examines the wartime experiences of women at the University

of Cincinnati, a coeducational, municipal university.⁶ In an attempt to give

voice to the women students, surveys were made in 1993 and 1994, with

questionnaires being sent to 200 randomly selected University of Cincinnati

women graduates from the classes of 1944 through 1947, of whom 90 re-

sponded.⁷ While there are obvious limitations on recollections of events of

over fifty years ago, college and world war were not ordinary experiences in

the lives of these women. The fact that certain memories persist is indicative

of the importance of these events to these women.⁸

While it is dubious to argue that any university or its graduates are typical,

the University of Cincinnati experience, as the rest of this paper demon-

strates, is suggestive of the extent and permanence of the changes wrought by

the war regarding the collegiate experiences of women students. It suggests

that the war did dramatically alter the gender composition of the campus and,

as a result, significantly affected campus social life. The war temporarily

produced greater opportunities for women students in terms of available fields

of study, career choices, and student leadership positions. However, changes

 

 

4. Susan Hartmann devotes a chapter in The Home Front and Beyond to women in higher

education. Also see I. L. Kandel, The Impact of the War Upon American Education (Chapel

Hill, 1948), and Mabel Newcomer, A Century of Higher Education for American Women (New

York, 1959). The best treatments of women in higher education, Barbara Miller Solomon, In

the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America

(New Haven, 1985) and Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, Campus Life: Undergraduate Cultures

from the End of the Eighteenth Century to the Present (New York, 1987), pay relatively little

attention to the war years.

5. See, for example, Reginald C. McGrane, The University of Cincinnati: A Success Story in

Higher Education (New York, 1963) which devotes only 21 pages to the war years with only

an occasional reference to women. The best published account of women and the war at the

University of Cincinnati is an undergraduate honors paper by Cynthia Hajost, "U.C. Women

During WW II," Forum: A Women's Studies Quarterly, 8 (Spring, 1982).

6. It should be noted that this is primarily the story of white women. Blacks and Asians com-

prised fewer than 2 percent of the student population, male and female, based on an examina-

tion of the Cincinnatian, the school yearbook, for the years 1941 through 1945.

7. The 200 women were selected from the 1003 women of the classes of 1944-1947 for

whom the University's Alumni Association has records. Four surveys were returned as unde-

liverable.

8. Survey results were used, not to recreate campus events, but to gauge personal reactions

to those events and to determine wartime impacts on the lives of these women. Factual data

was obtained from university records contained in the University of Cincinnati Archives.

Three frequently cited published sources are the News Record, the student newspaper of the

University of Cincinnati published in day and evening editions, the Cincinnatian, the student

yearbook, and, Profile, the student literary magazine. All unattributed quotations are from the

surveys.

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Women, Higher Education, and the Home Front                                41

 

in women's academic programs were minimal, and the academic and career

choices of women students changed only modestly. Nor did the war signifi-

cantly affect the attitudes of the university community toward women or the

beliefs of women students themselves regarding the role of women in

academia and in American society as a whole.

The University of Cincinnati, like other coeducational universities, changed

during World War II from a predominantly male to a predominantly female

student body.⁹ In 1940, 35 percent of its 10,800 students were women. With

the departure of almost 60 percent of its male students into the military or

war work, the University's total enrollment declined precipitously, to a low

of 6,664 in 1943-44. However, the number of women increased until by

1944-45 women comprised 60 percent of the student population (See Table

1).10 Women made up 70 percent of the class entering that academic year.

This drastically changed the character of the university, causing one graduate

to recall that "it was like going to a girls school with a boys' school (the

ASTP [Army Specialized Training Program]) close by."

Educators and the federal government quickly recognized that the reduction

in the number of male students would produce shortages in professions such

as medicine, engineering, and business, and that women would be needed to

make up the shortfall. As Margaret S. Morriss, Dean of Pembroke College

and Chairman of the Committee on College Women Students and the War,

American Council on Education, said: "The colleges at present are responsi-

ble for providing all the women scientists they can; mathematics, physics,

and chemistry should be studied to the greatest possible extent."¹ 1

The University of Cincinnati responded in much the same way as universi-

ties across the country. First, it instituted an accelerated curriculum which al-

lowed students to complete their degrees in less than the usual amount of

time by taking classes year round, thus enabling them to enter war work more

quickly. However, this initially affected few women because they were under-

 

 

 

9. The University's enrollment patterns mirrored national trends which showed a 45 percent

decline in university and liberal arts college enrollment from 1,167,304 in 1939-40 to 638,355

in 1944-45. In 1939-40, 36 percent of the students were women (423,906). The percentage

rose to 67 percent in 1944-45 (429,178) as the total number of women students actually in-

creased by 1.4 percent over prewar levels. The figures are those of the U.S. Office of

Education compiled for U.S. 79th Congress, 1st sess., House Report 214 "Effect of Certain

War Activities upon Colleges and Universities," Report from the Committee on Education,

House of Representatives pursuant to H. Res. 63 (Washington, D.C., 1945).

10. The increase in the absolute number of women was confined to undergraduates, as the

number of female graduate students declined during the war, although less dramatically than

male students. Women were never in a majority, peaking in 1944-45 at 48 percent. University

of Cincinnati, Report of the President, 1939-40/1940-41, 182-83, 188-89; 1943-44/1944-45,

154-55, 159-60.

11. College Women and the War: Proceedings of the Conference held at Northwestern

University, November 13-14, 1942 in Northwestern University Information, Vol. 11, no. 6 (Nov.

9, 1942), 19.

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42                                        OHIO HISTORY

represented in those fields targeted for acceleration, such as medicine, engi- neering, law, and business.12 Nor did women often select this option when it was offered in fields with larger concentrations of women. For example, the School of Household Administration dropped its plans for an accelerated cur- riculum due to lack of student interest.13 Cincinnati was not unique in this regard; the American Council on Education complained that "women students did not avail themselves of such opportunities [acceleration] to anything like the extent to which the men participated."14 The notable exception was the       12. In the survey, only two non-nursing students mentioned acceleration as a factor in their own education. 13. Report of the President, 1941-42/1942-43, 5, 48, 57, 64. 14. American Council on Education, College Women and the War (West Lafayette. Ind.,

• 4
 

Women, Higher Education, and the Home Front                                43

 

College of Nursing and Health which condensed its usual four-year program

to three years. However, since acceleration did not start until fall 1943 and

was discontinued in 1946, only those students entering school in 1943 spent

their entire program  in the accelerated format.¹⁵    Second, the University

formed the War Service Training Institute which offered defense and war

courses especially designed for women. These courses were not directed at

traditional students but were meant to expand the pool of women taking

University courses. The courses were supposed to appeal to high school stu-

dents of "superior academic standing," workers in non-war industry jobs that

do "not call upon the full use of your capacities," and housewives "willing to

offer your services to this emergency."¹⁶   The programs, for the most part,

coincided with the wartime needs identified by the federal government and the

American Council on Education and were similar to those offered at other

universities. 17

Finally, the University, like many others, permitted women to enter fields

of study from which they were previously barred. The most significant of

these was engineering in which the first women were admitted during the war,

the rationale being that the shortage of men and the critical need for engineers

in war industries necessitated the training of women engineers. It was also in

the University's self-interest since the College of Engineering and Commerce

had experienced a 60 percent decline in students. Women students helped off-

set the loss of male students and, additionally, kept the faculty gainfully em-

ployed. By 1944-45, 266 (40 percent) of the College's 671 students were

women. This compared to 82 women (5 percent) out of 1707 students in

1941-42.18

These wartime academic innovations affected relatively few degree-seeking

women. Indeed, it was the limited impact of the war on the academic careers

of most women students that was most striking. The war did result in the

loss of faculty because of military or governmental leaves of absence which,

at times, resulted in fewer classes being offered.¹⁹ However, this seems to

 

 

1943), 7. This was a reprint of the Council's Higher Education and National Defense Bulletin,

no. 35, 42,45,47, 48.

15. Survey; Report of the President, 1943-44/1944-45, 69; 1945-46/1946-47, 75.

16. "Your Country Needs Trained Woman Power to Speed Her Victory Program," Jan. 5,

1943, draft of a War Service Training Institute brochure in Box 13 of Dean of Arts and

Sciences files, University of Cincinnati Archives.

17. Ibid., 9; Northwestern University, College Women and the War, 23-29.

18. The College of Engineering and Commerce did admit women to most of its business pro-

grams prior to the war. From the available statistics it is not possible to distinguish engineering

students from business students during the war years, although it is clear that the vast majority

of women were business majors. Report of the President, 1941-42/1942-43 and 1943-44/1944-

45.

19. Report of the President, 1941-42/1942-43, 45, and Survey. McGrane estimates that 200

faculty members, mostly men, were granted war leaves, but it does not appear that the gender

composition of the faculty was significantly altered.

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44                                                         OHIO HISTORY

 

have been a minor inconvenience that was partially offset by the advantage of

having more senior professors teaching undergraduate courses.20  The core

curriculum in most fields changed little.²¹

More importantly, most women students did not change their academic

plans. Despite a national propaganda campaign to convince women students

to enter the sciences and mathematics, there was little movement at

Cincinnati into these male-dominated fields. The number of women majoring

in the so-called women's subjects- nursing, education, home economics, and

the applied arts- declined only from 68 percent in 1940-41 to 57 percent in

1944-45, and this was almost entirely as a result of the rising number of

business administration majors.²² Many contemporaries perceived a greater

amount of change than actually occurred. For example, the Dean of the

College of Medicine boasted that the College admitted in 1944-45 "by far the

largest number of women in its history" even though there were still only 23

women out of a total of 328 students, an increase of only eight women over

1940.23

That so few University of Cincinnati women students availed themselves of

the new career opportunities presented by the war was because many of them

entered college with a firm idea of the course of study and the occupation they

wished to pursue. These were usually those careers which American society

deemed appropriate for women, such as nursing and teaching. The war also

produced a great demand in these predominantly female fields, thus making it

unnecessary for women to change long-held career plans. For example, the

National Education Association estimated that by September 1944 there was a

shortage of approximately 70,000 teachers nationally.²⁴ The shortage was re-

flected at Cincinnati by an increase in requests for teachers received by the

Teachers College Bureau of Placement from 159 in 1939-40 to 689 in 1941-

42.²⁵

Also, by 1944 the War Manpower Commission estimated that the national

demand for civilian and military nurses exceeded supply by 100,000.

Congress, in an attempt to increase the supply, passed the Bolton Act in May

1943 which, among other things, created the United States Student Nurses

 

 

20. Survey.

21. A comparison of the University's Annual Catalogue of all Colleges for the years 1940-41

through 1946-47 shows little change in course offerings or program requirements. In addition

those women surveyed reported little change in the content of their own programs or individual

courses.

22. Report of the President, 1939-40/1940-41, 188-89; 1943-44/1944-45, 150-60. The re-

maining women majors in 1944-45 were distributed as follows: Liberal Arts, 26 percent;

Engineering and Commerce, 13 percent; Graduate, 3 percent; Medicine, I percent; and Law,

less than 1 percent.

23. Report of the President, 1941-42/1942-43, 172-73 and 1943-44/1944-45, 159-60.

24. New York Times, July 9, 1944.

25. "Annual Report of the Bureau of Placement," 1942-43 in Box 1, Faculty Minutes folder,

College of Education files, University of Cincinnati Archives.

• 6
 

Women, Higher Education, and the Home Front                                45

 

Corps, an organization which provided direct financial aid to students entering

nursing.²⁶ Between 1943 and 1948, the Corps financed the educations of ap-

proximately 125,000 women students nationwide.         At the University of

Cincinnati, 70 of the 76 women entering the nursing program in fall 1944

belonged to the Corps, and 141 of the 197 nursing students in 1945-46 were

Corps members.²⁷     Nursing was one of the few programs in which women

received financial assistance as a result of the war. The fact that this actually

attracted students who had not previously considered a career in nursing indi-

cates that similar incentives might have attracted more women to careers in

the sciences.

Another reason few women seized these wartime opportunities was the

mixed messages that women students received concerning their wartime role.

On the one hand, government agencies such as the War Manpower

Commission reminded them that "All women college students are under obli-

gation to participate directly either in very necessary community service, in

war production, or in service with the armed forces."²⁸ But, despite admoni-

tions that universities counsel their students to prepare for fields useful for

war production such as the sciences and mathematics, administrators extolled

the value of a traditional liberal arts education. University administrators at

Cincinnati and elsewhere urged women students to stay in school and plan for

the long-term. University President Raymond Walters told women students:

"As for you young women, I strongly urge you to ponder your patriotic obli-

gation. You can doubtless obtain a well-paid war job, but it is likely to be a

blind alley. ... For your future and that of the nation, your duty lies, I

think, in preparation for larger usefulness."²⁹  What little career counseling

the University provided often steered women to traditional career paths. One

alumna recalled that the Dean of Women "strongly advised me against major-

ing in math unless I wished to teach it" because there were no scholarships

available to women mathematics majors.30

 

 

26. "An Act to Provide for the Training of Nurses for the Armed Forces, Governmental,

Civilian, Hospitals, Health Agencies and War Industries .. ." Pub. Law 74, US Statutes at

Large, Vol. 57. pt. 1 (1943), 153-55.  The act was named for its principal sponsor,

Representative Frances Bolton of Ohio; it is described, along with wartime nursing in general,

in Doris Weatherford, American Women and World War II (New York, 1990), 16-25, and

Campbell, Women at War with America, 49-61.

27. University of Cincinnati School of Nursing and Health, "Schools of Nursing Annual

Report for Year Ending June 1, 1946," to the State of Ohio, State Medical Board, in Box 8,

Ohio State Nurses' Board folder, College of Nursing and Health files, University of Cincinnati

Archives.

28. Dr. Edward C. Elliott of the War Manpower Commission in Higher Education and

National Defense, no 35 (Oct. 17, 1942), 2.

29. "The President's Message to Prospective Freshmen," April 12, 1945, Box 7, Raymond

Walters Papers, University of Cincinnati Archives.

30. She ignored this advice and received her degree in mathematics although she did end up

in teaching, ironically getting her first job at the University of Cincinnati due to the loss of

faculty during the war.

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46                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

In many respects the University reinforced the ideology of domesticity.

College women were posited as cultural guardians who ensured a moral and

civilized society. President Walters reminded women students throughout the

war that "More than ever the burden falls upon young American women to

carry the torch of liberal and professional knowledge, so that the noble tradi-

tions of science, culture, and religion are maintained in this land. The great

lights must not go out."³¹ It was a message reinforced by a curriculum that

assumed the temporary nature of wartime changes. As Eleanor Maclay, head

of the Department of Nutrition, said: "Why do we still bake cakes? This war

won't last forever, and these women should know the principles of food

preparation, so we continue to make cakes.^"32

Even the courses offered through the War Service Training Institute tended

to be, though not exclusively, in those areas in which women traditionally

were considered to have an aptitude, such as health care, social work, food

services, languages, and secretarial work.³³ Perhaps the most significant rea-

son for the lack of movement into male-dominated fields was that few women

believed that the opportunities in war industries or "male" professions were

anything but "for the duration only." They were, as it turned out, correct

since male veterans reclaimed jobs in the professions and factories after the

war. But, there was also ample evidence during the war to support this belief

since there were distinct limits to the wartime opportunities available to

women. In Cincinnati's Cooperative System of Technological Education, or

co-op system, for example, placement officials continued to guide men into

production and management trainee positions in manufacturing plants while

women students were directed to clerical and general office positions.34  In

general, women students at Cincinnati did not appear to believe that the war

would cause a major change in their long-term career prospects or in job-re-

lated gender stereotyping. There were virtually no expressions at the time or

in the survey that indicated that women students believed that the war would

produce long-term  change in these areas.  Very few survey respondents

thought the war affected their beliefs as to what careers were suitable for or

available to women.

The war had a greater impact on campus life in general than it did on aca-

demics, but even here the effect on women was mixed. This is not surprising

given the diverse nature of the student body. Many women at Cincinnati

 

 

31. "The President's Message to Prospective Freshmen," April 12, 1945.

32. News Record, March 27, 1943.

33. Full descriptions of each program, including the required courses, are contained in Box

13, Programs of Study folder, Dean of Arts and Sciences files, University of Cincinnati

Archives.

34. The co-op program at Cincinnati was designed to give students practical experience as

interns in businesses. It was well regarded nationally. There were separate curricula for men

and women students. University of Cincinnati, Annual Catalogue, 1940-41, 30-33; 1946-47, 36-

40.

• 8
 

Women, Higher Education, and the Home Front                       47

 

resided with their parents and commuted to campus, which limited their in-

volvement in campus social life, while nursing students lived at the

University hospital located almost a mile from campus; this and the nature

of their nursing schedules precluded participation in campus social activities,

a situation that was exacerbated during the war when most worked extra hours

in the wards. A 1944 nursing graduate remarked on the obstacles to social

involvement: "As nursing students we had a 48 hour week (for example if we

had 24 hours of class we had 24 hours of ward work), by adding 12 hours of

extra duty our energy level was not abundant. We, too, had to study!"

For many other students, prewar campus social life had revolved around

football games, fraternity parties, and formal dances, activities which were

curtailed or eliminated during the war. Football was suspended for the 1944

and 1945 seasons, and eight of the University's sixteen fraternities went on

inactive status during the war because of the shortage of men. On the other

hand, sororities flourished with record-breaking pledge classes.35

The most disruptive change was in the area of dating where the lack of men

students was keenly felt. As historian Beth L. Bailey has observed, the war

undermined a system of courtship based on demonstrating popularity through

the quantity of dates and paved the way for a new system which emphasized

going steady.³⁶ The Cincinnati experience lends credence to this interpreta-

tion; there was a greater emphasis on steady relationships. A campus poll

showed that 85 percent of women students were willing to get engaged to a

man who was about to enter military service, and other anecdotal evidence in-

dicates that there was an increase in the number of engagements. There was

not, however, a "rush to the altar." The same campus poll indicated that only

31 percent of the women were willing to marry a man before he entered the

military for fear that the war might cause a personality change that would re-

sult in a failed marriage.³⁷ Also, statistics from the College of Nursing and

Health indicate that women withdrew from school to get married during the

war at about the same rate as they had before the war, one to three per year.³⁸

There was an attempt to maintain the old social system. The University of

Cincinnati did not establish a dating bureau as was done at many other mid-

western universities, such as Michigan, Minnesota, Northwestern, and Ohio

State.³⁹ However, almost all the survey respondents commented on the ab-

sence of men and the consequent impact on dating possibilities.  A 1945

graduate noted that "there were 4F's (& some were pretty cute) but we had

 

 

35. News Record, Jan. 12, 1944: Cincinnatian, 1944.

36. Bailey, Beth L. From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth Century America

(Baltimore, 1988)

37. News Record, Dec. 5, 1942.

38. "Schools of Nursing Annual Report for Year ending .... 1941-1947, Box 8, College of

Nursing and Health files, University of Cincinnati Archives.

39. Bailey, From Front Porch to Back Seat; Minnesota Daily, May 18, 1943.

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48                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

very few dates." A large number of survey respondents also noted, with re-

gret, the curtailment of dances, the principal forum for collegiate social life.

However, even though some events such as the Junior Prom in 1942 were

canceled, many of the campus social functions merely took on a military mo-

tif through USO sponsorship or the involvement of Army Specialized

Training Program soldiers, such as the 1942 Victory Dance at which a "V"

Queen was selected.⁴0  Numerous dances and socials were held to allow

women students to get acquainted with military personnel, some of which the

USO sponsored at area military bases, such as Camp Atterbury in Indiana and

Fort Knox in Kentucky. These events did not, however, necessarily compen-

sate for reduced dating possibilities. In fact, student USO hostesses were pro-

hibited from dating the servicemen they entertained.⁴¹ On the other hand, the

presence of service men on campus provided social contacts that otherwise

would not have occurred, and several survey respondents indicated that they

dated, and some eventually married, ASTP soldiers.

While most of the alumnae surveyed noted the negative impact of the war

on campus social life, few expressed regrets. As one woman stated:

 

I suppose we missed some of the hoop-la of college life. I never felt the lack of

this. We learned to make life pleasant for ourselves by ourselves. Most of us had

boy friends in dangerous places. My best friend's fiance was killed in the Battle of

the Bulge. Some of us had to grow up pretty fast.

 

Thus it is clear that having loved ones at war conditioned how some women

experienced college life. A 1945 graduate observed that "it was a time of

great emotional strain ... It was a time of worry and concern for the men in

service. It was a time of letter writing and waiting for the postman." A 1947

graduate whose high school boy friend was killed in Germany in January

1945 recalled that "this was very devastating to me and as a result I was not

all that concerned with dating and social activities." She also expressed the

sentiment that "I think everyone had someone they loved in service and we

lived in fear, prayed a lot, wrote many V-mail letters, and tried to be cheerful

and supportive of each other. There was a closeness and a team feeling of

pulling together."

This statement reflects both the greater seriousness of women students dur-

ing the war, something noted by many respondents, and a greater sense of

camaraderie among women. The war "drew women closer together" both

through the common bond of having a loved one overseas and from the mere

fact of spending more time together. Playing cards and going to the movies

together became substitutes for dating.

 

 

 

40. News Record, Jan. 17, 1942, Feb. 25, 1942.

41. News Record, Evening College ed., May 8, 1943, May 15, 1943, and survey responses.

• 10
 

Women, Higher Education, and the Home Front                    49

Women also engaged in war-related volunteer activities, many of which, such as sorority war-bond drives, involved women exclusively. Drawing on a long tradition of female voluntarism, they served as nurses aides, USO hostesses, worked for the Red Cross, and sold war bonds. Many of these vol- untary activities were extensions of women's domestic roles. Women stu- dents knitted sweaters, socks, and scarves for the Red Cross refugee relief pro- gram and Bundles for Britain, and students in the College of Home Economics volunteered to go to area grocery stores to explain the rationing system.42 The Women's Unit of Quadres, an African-American student orga- nization, worked in the black community under the auspices of the Community Chest; they helped in nursery schools, organized youth clubs at the Nash Community Center, and conducted studies of civic and industrial ac- tivities in Cincinnati as they related to African-Americans. They argued that they were aiding the war effort by helping to solve domestic problems, such as juvenile delinquency, thus allowing the nation to devote more attention to defense.43 The apparent major exception to this domestic emphasis was the Cincinnati Auxiliary Defense Effort and Training Corps (CADETS) whose members took defense classes and engaged in weekly military drill, complete with mili- tary-style uniforms. This civil defense component waned after its first year of operation, 1942, however, and the organization thereafter performed largely the same type of community service as other campus organizations. Despite the seemingly nontraditional aspects of women in military uniform, one of       42. Cincinnati Alumnus, 14 (fall, 1940); 15 (Spring, 1943); Survey. 43. Profile, 5 (Dec., 1942), 12.

• 11
 

50                                                    OHIO HISTORY

 

the avowed purposes of the CADETS was to "acquaint women with the top-

ics which men will discuss the rest of our lives, and help them understand the

processes of war," which indicates a greater concern for postwar readjustment

than for defense per se.⁴⁴ The purpose of the military drill was vague. A

former member described the CADETS as "a uniformed phys. ed. class," and

another remarked that "I don't remember what we actually accomplished."⁴⁵

While these voluntary efforts seldom took women beyond their traditional

roles, the war provided them with opportunities to move into leadership posi-

tions in student organizations which men previously monopolized. In fact,

the whole structure of student government was gender-based. Specific posi-

tions were reserved for men, others for women, and there were separate Men's

and Women's Senates to govern their respective activities. It was a gover-

nance structure that mirrored that of the University itself in which the only

female senior administrators were those dealing exclusively with women stu-

dents: the Dean of Women and the Deans of the School of Household

Administration and the School of Nursing and Health.

From 1943 to 1946, the preponderance of female students on campus thrust

women into many student leadership positions. For example, starting in 1943

with the appointment of Mary Linn DeBeck, the News Record, the student

newspaper, had four consecutive women editors, the first four in the paper's

history. The staff of the paper also became predominantly female, a change

which produced a change in content, particularly of the editorials. Prior to

1943, the editorial page seldom dealt with specifically women's issues. This

changed under the women editors as numerous editorials dealt with women's

topics, many of which were perceived as controversial. In a May 15, 1943,

editorial, DeBeck challenged the University administration to act to protect

women from "the growing incidents of attempted molestations of women on

and around the campus." In a January 12, 1944, editorial, she criticized the

administration for allowing too many ASTP soldiers on campus to the detri-

ment of civilian students, women in most cases. This created something of a

furor on and off campus as DeBeck was denounced as unpatriotic by the city's

daily newspapers. Later, Louise Dreifus, the 1945-46 editor, attacked the fra-

ternity system as being educationally "worthless," representative of the "herd

instinct," and placing excessive value on clothes and money.⁴⁶ This distinc-

tively female quality of the paper was later noted by the new male editors in

1947 who claimed that the "four year petticoat dynasty" had "stepped on more

toes and raised more eyebrows than ever before."⁴⁷

 

 

44. News Record, Feb. 20, 1943.

45. Survey; After initial enthusiasm the membership in the Corps dropped to about 150 in

1944 from a peak of 500 in 1942. News Record, Sept. 26, 1942; Oct. 17, 1942; Cicinnatian,

1944, 152.

46. News Record, Feb. 14, 1946.

47. News Record, June 7, 1947.

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Women, Higher Education, and the Home Front                       51

 

Men continued to monopolize the class and student council presidencies,

but a woman, Rosemary Kauffman, was defeated only after a runoff election

for senior class president in 1943. Not only was it unprecedented for a

woman to come this close to winning, it was unusual for a woman even to

run for the office.⁴⁸ (It should be noted that voter participation in these elec-

tions was, as it is today, very low.) However, the fact that men continued to

win these elections despite the preponderance of women voters indicates how

entrenched traditional gender distinctions were.

The election results provide evidence of the limits of change. The allot-

ment of offices on the basis of gender not only persisted during the war, but

women apparently never even questioned the arrangement. They may have

been partially motivated by a desire to make no waves in order to maintain

control over their own affairs, which organizations like the Women's Senate

provided them. Thus, while many of the women surveyed acknowledged the

war's role in allowing them to hold offices they otherwise might not have

held, many echoed the sentiments of a 1944 graduate who "did not have the

vision or the desire to fill those commonly reserved for men."

The University community in general reacted ambivalently to the new

prominence of women on campus during the war. The University administra-

tion was very positive, at least in the short-term, a not surprising reaction

since the University depended on the revenue derived from women students to

keep it afloat. Efforts to recruit women students intensified during the war.

The University, for the first time, formed a Committee on Admission in

April 1944 whose function was to travel throughout Ohio, Indiana, and

Kentucky to attract prospective students, mostly women, to the University.

The administration credited the Committee with attracting "the largest group

of women students in the University's history and also the largest number of

non-resident women students."⁴⁹ Plans for a new women's dormitory were

initiated in an attempt to attract more out-of-state women, and the Evening

College added courses designed to appeal to women. Initially these were

courses whose goal was to improve women's chances of employment or

promotion in the war economy, but during the last two years of the war, they

tended to deal with cultural or domestic topics.50

The war experience did cause some administrators and faculty to moderate

their views on gender difference. President Raymond Walters, after noting

that women had performed well in the areas of science and medicine, con-

cluded that: "The difference based on sex is less than is commonly thought.

 

 

48. News Record, Nov. 10. 1943.

49. Report of the President, 1943-44/1944-45, 30. Nonresident status refers to someone who

did not reside in Hamilton County, Ohio.

50. For example. Frank Neuffer, Dean of the Evening College reported a 57 percent in-

crease in applied arts enrollment in fall 1944; Cincinnati Post, Sept. 27, 1944, Oct. 4, 1944, Jan.

9, 1945.

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52                                                             OHIO HISTORY

 

Our women students of high intellectual calibre are not greatly different in

their mental processes than men students."⁵¹ After observing women engi-

neering students, Bradley Jones, Head of the Department of Aeronautical

Engineering, conceded that "women are not devoid of brains.^"52

Women's success in new subject areas, however, was often explained in

stereotypical  terms.    For   example,    Ernest  Pickering,   Professor   of

Architecture, after observing the women in his Evening College drafting and

architectural drawing classes, concluded that "women show a special aptness

for these two subjects because of their natural tendency to detail and exact-

ness."⁵³ Moreover, women who took traditionally "male" classes encountered

persistent prejudice.54 Two premed students felt that the few women in their

classes were singled out for scrutiny by the professors, while a nursing stu-

dent recalled feeling sorry for the female physicians in the hospital who "were

often treated by their male peers as a sort of laughing stock & were frequently

the victims of rather cruel practical jokes & tricks." Another alumna remem-

bered being "treated terribly-like a leper" in a premed physics course taught

by "the original sexist." Typical of the condescending attitude toward women

that persisted among many faculty and administrators was that of George

Barbour, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts.        While recognizing that

"evidently sex-differences are also rationed for the duration," Barbour could not

take women seriously as students, instead seeing them as yearning for the re-

turn of men to campus. "The girls are all praying for this. Otherwise, why go

to college?"⁵5

Nor does the administration's paternalistic attitude towards women students

appear to have been altered by the war, as exemplified by President Walters

who justified the new dormitory for women on the grounds that "parents quite

naturally refuse to have their daughters live in private dwellings in a large

city."⁵⁶ Throughout the war, the University strictly regulated the interaction

of women students and military personnel at social functions, insisting that

 

 

 

51. Raymond Walters, "Chi Omega Address." April 8, 1945, in Box 7 of Raymond Walters

Papers, University of Cincinnati Archives.

52. News Record, Nov. 16, 1944.

53. Cincinnati Post, Jan. 8, 1945.

54. It should be noted that experiences and perceptions varied in this regard. Some survey

respondents reported that they were well received by both male faculty and students.

55. Letter, Dec. 20, 1942. Box 13, War Folder, Dean of Arts and Sciences files, University

of Cincinnati Archives.

56. A bond issue to construct the women's dormitory, among other projects, was approved

by the voters on Nov. 7, 1944, but the dormitory was never built. Instead the money was di-

verted to build housing for servicemen returning to college via the GI Bill. The housing short-

ages after 1945 led to some relaxation of the restrictions on women in off-campus housing. In

fact, women graduate students and ex-service women were asked to find rooms in private

homes so as to make room for male veterans and their families. Report of the President, 1943-

44/1944-45, 20, 25; "Cabinet Minutes," March 14, 1946, Box 16, Raymond Walters Papers.

University of Cincinnati Archives, News Record, Nov. 2. 1944.

• 14
 

Women, Higher Education, and the Home Front                        53

 

the students be properly chaperoned. Indeed women students had to supply a

faculty reference and the name of their priest, rabbi, or minister when apply-

ing to be a USO hostess.⁵⁷

Ironically, the University's most paternalistic and intrusive administrators

were the females who directed the College of Nursing and Health. Their poli-

cies actually grew more restrictive during the war. Nursing students, most of

whom lived in a dormitory attached to the hospital, had strict visitation rules,

were required to have lights out by 11:30 p.m., and could not join sororities

or have numerous social activities unless approved by the College's

Executive Committee. Nor could nursing students marry without the permis-

sion of the College administrators, a rule which led at least one student to

marry secretly, a transgression which when discovered resulted in her dis-

missal. All of these regulations persisted into the postwar period although

there is some evidence that the wartime experiences caused some women to

chafe at the restrictions.⁵⁸

In general, male students treated the intrusion of women into the male

sphere as an amusing, temporary phenomenon. Some anticipated "pink cur-

tains on bridges" now that women had entered engineering.59 A male reporter

for the News Record wrote about the student union: "There was a time when

a "femme" who dared to invade the male sanctuary of the pool table area was

looked upon in much the same amazed and unwanted manner a roach would be

when suddenly discovered in a sandwich .... Maybe the phrase 'man's

world' is another casualty of war."⁶⁰ In general, such changes, because they

were temporary, were not seen as threats to male prerogatives. Thus women

training to be engineers or playing pool were notable precisely because they

were odd, not because they were establishing precedents for future behavior.

The end of the war in 1945 produced another radical shift in student demo-

graphics at Cincinnati and nationally. Fueled by postwar prosperity and the

GI Bill, enrollment doubled over wartime levels, rising to 17,552 in the

1947-48 academic year; this was approximately a 70 percent increase over the

enrollment in the years immediately preceding the war. While the number of

women students grew steadily throughout the period, women as a percentage

of the student population fell to less than a third, a figure lower than prewar

levels. This was because the number of men, many of them veterans, sky-

rocketed from 2995 in 1944-45 to 12,097 in 1947-48.⁶¹

 

 

 

57. News Record, May 8, 1943, May 15, 1943.

58. Ninety-nine of the 109 members of the class of 1946 signed a petition requesting greater

freedom to leave the dormitory without permission. "Executive Committee Minutes," and

"Annual Report to the National League of Nursing Education," 1946, in College of Nursing

and Health files, University of Cincinnati Archives; Survey.

59. News Record, Nov. 16, 1944.

60. News Record, April 12, 1945.

61. See Table 1.

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54                                                         OHIO HISTORY

 

University administrators embraced the mission of educating veterans with

a single-mindedness that surpassed the University's wartime efforts.  In the

process, the needs of women students increasingly took a backseat to those of

veterans.

Plans for a new women's dormitory were quickly dropped in favor of mar-

ried student housing. While most women students applauded the return to

"normal" campus life, some were concerned with the possible reversal of fa-

vorable wartime changes. In 1946, Barbara Apking and Alice Decker, editors

of the Evening College edition of the News Record, responded to the sugges-

tion that women defer their educations in order to accommodate the veterans:

 

It's the same old story of in time of war women are found to be very handy to keep

industry going and the guns firing, and in saving educational institutions from

walking the "last half mile." But as soon as the emergency is past, they are ex-

pected to fold their hand and retire to their behind-the-scenes rockers and pots and

pans.... It is our humble opinion that there should be education and equal oppor-

tunity for all. Women did their bit during the war. Why should they be discrimi-

nated against because they wear skirts and carried a torch instead of a gun!⁶²

 

Such concern was justified because many wartime academic innovations

were abandoned within two years of the war's end. The government and edu-

cators no longer urged women to enter the sciences or other "male" profes-

sions, and even the modest wartime changes in women's academic behavior

largely disappeared. By the 1947-48 academic year, 61 percent of the full-

time women students majored in nursing, teaching, home economics, and ap-

plied arts, only 7 percent fewer than before the war.⁶³ Significantly, women

accounted for only 16 of the 2155 engineering students, 25 of the 340 medical

students, and 20 of the 439 law students while the field showing the largest

increase among women was home economics.⁶⁴      On the other hand, some

important wartime precedents did persist. While there were few women engi-

neering students, the program did not revert to its previously all-male status.

In the social arena, the large influx of men did not cause a reversion to pre-

war dating patterns, perhaps because many of the returning veterans were al-

ready married and thus more serious about academic pursuits.⁶⁵  The accep-

tance of married students, something frowned upon in prewar days, fit in with

the greater emphasis on steady relationships.

 

 

62. News Record, Evening College ed., May 16, 1946.

63. This percentage would have come close to matching the prewar figure if not for a pre-

cipitous decline in the number of nursing students. The remaining women were distributed as

follows: Liberal Arts, 26 percent; Business Administration, 7 percent; Graduate School, 3.5

percent; Medicine, 1 percent; Law, 1 percent; Engineering, .5 percent. Report of the President,

1947-48/1948-49.

64. Ibid.

65. Many of the survey respondents remarked, with approval, on the greater seriousness and

maturity of the veterans.

• 16
 

Women, Higher Education, and the Home Front                      55

 

Men quickly reasserted their dominance of campus leadership positions.

The campus publications taken over by women during the war once again had

men in the leading editorial positions and women in subordinate staff posi-

tions. Women students generally accepted this return to the prewar order; a

1945 graduate's comment is typical: "Men were still given the higher offices

.. we felt nothing wrong with this. Our roles were subordinate & we didn't

quarrel with that."

However, women students were not willing to forfeit all wartime gains.

For example, the shortage of men during the war had enabled women to join

the university band for the first time.⁶⁶ In fall 1946, after some male band

members lobbied to have the band returned to all-male status, women mem-

bers rebuffed the attempt; band director Merrill B. Van Pelt gave the women

lukewarm endorsement, saying that "they've been very faithful, and their per-

formance has been adequate."⁶⁷

Apparently the war did not produce many lasting changes in women's roles

in the University community, nor did it change the attitudes of the women

students concerning their role in American society. Obviously their reactions

varied considerably, with much depending on individual college experiences,

and attitude formation is difficult to gauge after a lapse of fifty years. But

based on the responses to the survey, wartime experience produced little sig-

nificant change. Approximately 85 percent of the respondents indicated that

the war did not alter their attitudes toward career, marriage, or family. For the

most part, they had always anticipated getting married and having a family,

and the war did little to change this feeling. Most did in fact get married and

have children during or after the war, thus fulfilling the role mapped out for

them by peacetime society.

There was less unanimity about how a career fit into this plan. One end of

the spectrum was represented by the alumna who replied that "most women of

my age group felt that marriage was a goal in itself.. ." and that women

wanted a family, not a career. More common, however, was the sentiment of

an education major who said "I still wanted marriage, a family, then teach-

ing-in that order." These priorities were reflected in the most typical post-

graduation behavioral pattern, namely that of pursuing a career until marriage

and then quitting either after marriage or after the birth of the first child. As

one graduate remarked, "I still wanted to become a mother & only worked un-

til the wedding. No one in my circle worked after marriage." Others, how-

ever, returned to work after their children were grown. While most were

pleased with the path they chose, some, in retrospect, were not totally satis-

fied with how their lives unfolded. As a 1946 dietetics major stated: "All of

my college friends stayed home with the children. Yet as I look back, I regret

 

 

66. News Record, Oct. 20, 1943.

67. Cincinnati Post, Nov. 18, 1946; Cincinnatian, 1946.

• 17
 

56                                                    OHIO HISTORY

 

that I did not continue my work when I married. It was expected that women

did not continue work."

Not surprisingly, a couple of respondents went to college never intending

to marry, and nothing happened to change their minds. Others retained the

same desire for marriage and children, but the uncertainty of the war era drove

home the importance of being able to support themselves. Yet others con-

tinued a trend that had evidenced even before the war, the feeling that they

could have it all-a college education, career, marriage, and children.

Few respondents, however, reported that the war had caused a fundamental

shift in their attitude toward marriage and family. The attitudinal changes that

did occur had more to do with their college experience than the war itself. For

example, one nursing student changed her mind about starting a family right

away because she viewed housework as "hard work and boring," particularly

when compared to her more "satisfying" studies and college social life. In fact

only one graduate, a 1947 one, reported a major change directly related to the

war. Her unique response is matched by its poignancy: "because of the war I

lost my boy friend; after graduation I left town to teach and never married."

Even if the war years did not substantially impact the beliefs of women

students, it is possible, that over three years of campus life dominated by

women, and the closer female bonds this created, produced some sympathy for

the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s. After all, for some the

wartime sense of female community was exhilarating. One graduate stated

that "I found my time at UC the happiest of my life, perhaps in part because

most of the men were at war and we had the campus to ourselves .. ." In

fairness, however, such opinions were exceptional, and hardly a basis for find-

ing a direct relationship between active wartime students and the more mili-

tant feminists of the 1960s and 1970s.

The survey of Cincinnati graduates predictably produced a variety of views

on women's rights, but there was a surprising degree of agreement in certain

areas. Most graduates believed that their college experiences had little impact

on the formation of their views. Instead they credited their postwar experi-

ences in the workplace, along with their family upbringing, with shaping

their opinions on women's rights. Almost all agreed that there should be

equal pay for equal work and that women should be treated as equals in the

workplace, but few identified themselves as feminists and most took pains to

distance themselves from contemporary feminism. On the surface it appears,

as said, that there is scant evidence of a direct link between the World War II

college experiences and the later emergence of feminism, although consider-

ably more exploration of the lives of these women would be necessary before

one could make any definitive conclusions on this complex topic.

Based on the Cincinnati experience, several conclusions can be drawn about

the impact of the war on women in higher education. First, it must be rec-

• 18
 

Women, Higher Education, and the Home Front                     57

 

ognized that the war affected them in diverse ways. For some the war had lit-

tle impact. As one graduate recalls, "I went my way, carrying as many as 21

hours, playing tennis, working. .. " But for others "the war was an om-

nipresent factor." It is clear, however, that Dean Ingle's prediction concerning

the revolutionary impact of the war on women in higher education did not

come to pass.

Additionally, the war had relatively little impact on most women's aca-

demic careers. Although it did lead to the lowering of barriers to the entry of

women in some fields, notably engineering, relatively few availed themselves

of the opportunity to enter "male" fields such as engineering, the sciences,

law, or medicine. Most women students at Cincinnati appear to have entered

the university with well-defined career plans which the war did not cause them

to reconsider.

In a long-term sense, the war did lead to more women attending colleges, as

the GI Bill stimulated overall tremendous growth in university enrollment,

both at Cincinnati and nationally. However, most veterans and new college

students were men, and women as a percentage of the total student population

actually declined well below prewar levels. The most that can be said for the

war is that it modestly accelerated the century-long trend of more women at-

tending college.

The University community's attitude about women's role in education or

society remained largely unchanged by the war. Most male students, faculty,

and administrators viewed wartime changes related to women as temporary,

and the war did not challenge their fundamental views on women's proper

role. After the war, women were expected to return to their subordinate posi-

tions within the university community (as well as society at large), and, for

the most part, they did.

The war's impact on the attitudes of women students is more complex, but

it does not appear that it had a significant liberating effect. Many women

students did experience a greater sense of female community during the war,

but they did not change their priorities, which included putting marriage and

family ahead of career. It is perhaps incorrect even to speak of liberation

since few women students thought in those terms at the time.  As one

alumna, who later became a self-described militant feminist, assessed the

war's impact on her feminist consciousness: "I cannot honestly say (and am

ashamed of this) that the war affected my feminism. What did affect it was

the rush to marriage, family, ticky-tacky houses and washing machines after

the war."

• 19