Our next meeting will be on
Thursday, June 2, 2022
3:30 p.m.
La Salle Academy Library
Yale Needs Women:
How the First Group of Girls Rewrote the Rules of an Ivy League Giant
by Anne Gardiner Perkins
About the book:
“If Yale was going to keep its standing as one of the top two or three colleges in the nation, the availability of women was an amenity it could no longer do without.”
In the summer of 1969, from big cities to small towns, young women across the country sent in applications to Yale University for the first time. The Ivy League institution dedicated to graduating “one thousand male leaders” each year had finally decided to open its doors to the nation’s top female students. The landmark decision was a huge step forward for women’s equality in education.
Or was it?
The experience the first undergraduate women found when they stepped onto Yale’s imposing campus was not the same one their male peers enjoyed. Isolated from one another, singled out as oddities and sexual objects, and barred from many of the privileges an elite education was supposed to offer, many of the first female students found themselves immersed in an overwhelmingly male culture they were unprepared to face. Yale Needs Women is the story of how these young women fought against the backward-leaning traditions of a centuries-old institution and created the opportunities that would carry them into the future. Anne Gardiner Perkins’s unflinching account of a group of young women striving for change is an inspiring story of strength, resilience, and courage that continues to resonate today.
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About the Author:
Anne Gardiner Perkins is an award-winning historian and expert in higher education. She grew up in Baltimore and graduated from Yale University, where she won the Porter Prize in history and was elected the first woman editor-in-chief of the Yale Daily News. Anne is a Rhodes Scholar who received her PhD in higher education from the University of Massachusetts Boston. She earned her master’s degree from Harvard, where she won the Littauer Award for academic excellence and served as a teaching fellow in education policy. Anne has spent her life in education, from urban high school teacher to elected school committee member, and has presented papers on higher education at leading conferences.
When she is not writing or doing research, Anne enjoys hiking with her family, tending her vegetable garden, and beating her children at board games. She lives with her husband in Boston and in Harvard, Massachusetts. Yale Needs Women is her first book.
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Link to WGBH audio discussion of Yale Needs Women: https://www.wgbh.org/news/education/2020/01/03/book-club-yale-needs-women
Link to Bookmarks capsule reviews of Yale Needs Women (This site provides link to full reviews):
https://bookmarks.reviews/reviews/all/yale-needs-women-how-the-first-group-of-girls-rewrote-the-rules-of-an-ivy-league-giant/
Link to Anne Gardiner Perkins’ website: https://annegardinerperkins.com/yale-needs-women/
Link to Anne Gardiner Perkins goodreads page: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18389691.Anne_Gardiner_Perkins
Here is a link to a bunch of videos about Yale Needs Women that can be found on YouTube. They include Zoom interviews, C-Span uploads, and several interviews of varying lengths. Choose your own adventure!
good books good company 