Troubled identities: Gender and status in the history of the mixed college in English universities since 1945

Abstract

Questions of gender, prestige and identity have been closely entwined in the history of educational institutions. The last century saw a near total abandonment of the pattern of segregation by sex in the formal organisation of colleges and universities in England. The first half of this article outlines institutional history, focusing upon the replacement of singlesex by mixed colleges in the universities of London, Oxford and Cambridge. The second half looks more closely at gender in relation to status, culture and identity in the history of the mixed college. It shows that debates over coeducation and 'co-residence and anxieties about gender and status were played out differently in different educational settings. Feminists and women educationalists were divided on the question of the desirability of coeducation, and some of the battles which had been uneasily resolved or deferred by segregation remained to be fought.