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The admission of transgender students to women's colleges in the United States has been a subject of debate. Some colleges have changed their policy in favor of admitting transgender students, but there is little uniformity in definitional details.
In 2013, high school senior Rose (then Calliope) Wong was denied acceptance to Smith College, one of the largest women's colleges in the United States, because she identified as a transgender woman. Wong marked her biological gender identity as male on her FAFSA, despite her self-identification as a woman. Subsequently, Smith deemed Wong inadmissible to the women's college and denied her application. [1] Smith students, led by a trans-activist organization, Q&A, protested the decision and began a Change.org petition encouraging Smith to revise their admissions policy to include trans women. [2] Although Smith was not the first women's college to amend their admissions policy, Wong's story catalyzed a nationwide reconsideration of admissions policies at women's institutions. Smith College amended their policy to include admission of trans women in May 2015. [3]
Mills College, located in Oakland, California, formally published an inclusive policy accepting transgender women and nonbinary students, in 2014. [4]
A 2019 analysis only found two Women's College Coalition (WCC) member institutions without such policies: Meredith College and St. Catherine University. [5] Since then, St. Catherine has revised its policy to admit transgender women and nonbinary students. [6]
The policies at each institution vary. [5] Some, such as Hollins University, [7] Cedar Crest College, [8] and Historically Black Women's Colleges Spelman College [9] and Bennett College, [10] only admit students who live and identify as women, regardless of their gender assignment at birth, but allow admitted students who come out as another gender to continue their studies and graduate.
By contrast, Mills College, one of the first women's institution to adopt "a formal admissions policy regarding transgender and transitioning," does accept trans men who have not changed their legal gender markers. [10] Agnes Scott College published a policy as early as 2011 and updated in 2014 with language that states that they openly admit "students who were assigned female at birth, as well as those who were assigned male or female at birth, but who now identify as female, transgender, agender, gender fluid or non-binary." [11]
Ultimately, the differences between the policies are determined by the individual institution's definition of womanhood and their varying degrees of inclusivity and/or exclusivity extended to the transgender community. [12]
Although the exact number of trans women attending women's colleges nationwide is unknown, responses to the revised admissions policies have garnered mixed reactions over the past four years. Mills College, the first women's college to welcome trans students, reports approximately 8% of over 700 undergraduate students identify as transgender. [13] Despite the low visibility of trans women at women's colleges, these institutions continue to face backlash and criticism, specifically from alumnae, who often believe the policies disregard and veer away from the core mission and purpose of women's colleges. Although majority of alumnae, current students and the institutions themselves agree women's colleges were created to educate and empower women, the discrepancies in defining and labeling womanhood fuel the differences in opinions and the revised policies themselves. [12]
Furthermore, with the introduction and adoption of trans-inclusive admissions policies on these campuses, additional challenges include the day-to-day implementation of the policy, such as adequately providing academic and residential resources for trans students while ensuring a welcoming and inclusive collegiate environment. [14] Trans students even face the possibility of potential physical harassment and other forms of discrimination on traditional college campuses. [15]
Mount Holyoke College is a private liberal arts women's college in South Hadley, Massachusetts, United States. It is the oldest member of the historic Seven Sisters colleges, a group of historically female colleges in the Northeastern United States. The college was founded in 1837 as the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary by Mary Lyon, a pioneer in education for women. Mount Holyoke is part of the Five College Consortium in Western Massachusetts.
Wellesley College is a private women's liberal arts college in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Founded in 1870 by Henry and Pauline Durant as a female seminary, it is a member of the Seven Sisters Colleges, an unofficial grouping of current and former women's colleges in the northeastern United States.
Smith College is a private liberal arts women's college in Northampton, Massachusetts. It was chartered in 1871 by Sophia Smith and opened in 1875. It is a member of the historic Seven Sisters colleges, a group of women's colleges in the Northeastern United States. Smith is also a member of the Five College Consortium with four other institutions in the Pioneer Valley: Mount Holyoke College, Amherst College, Hampshire College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst; students of each college are allowed to attend classes at any other member institution. On campus are Smith's Museum of Art and Botanic Garden, the latter designed by Frederick Law Olmsted.
Non-binary and genderqueer are umbrella terms for gender identities that are not solely male or female. Non-binary identities often fall under the transgender umbrella since non-binary people typically identify with a gender that is different from the sex assigned to them at birth, though some non-binary people do not consider themselves transgender.
The Seven Sisters are a group of seven highly prestigious private liberal arts colleges in the Northeastern United States that are historically women's colleges. Barnard College, Bryn Mawr College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and Wellesley College are still women's colleges. Vassar College became coeducational in 1969, and Radcliffe College was absorbed in 1999 by Harvard College and now offers programs in advanced study.
Spelman College is a private, historically Black, women's liberal arts college in Atlanta, Georgia. It is a founding member of the Atlanta University Center academic consortium. Founded in 1881 as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary, Spelman awarded its first college degrees in 1901 and is the oldest private historically Black liberal arts institution for women.
Mills College at Northeastern University in Oakland, California is part of Northeastern University's global university system. Mills College was founded as the Young Ladies Seminary in 1852 in Benicia, California; it was relocated to Oakland in 1871 and became the first women's college west of the Rockies. In 2022, it merged with Northeastern University.
Hollins University is a private university in Hollins, Virginia. Founded in 1842 as Valley Union Seminary in the historical settlement of Botetourt Springs, it is one of the oldest institutions of higher education for women in the United States.
The National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) is an umbrella organization for 26 national and international women's sororities throughout the United States and Canada. Panhellenic refers to the group's members being autonomous social Greek-letter societies of college women and alumnae.
Women's colleges in the United States are private single-sex U.S. institutions of higher education that only admit female students. They are often liberal arts colleges. There are approximately 26 active women's colleges in the United States in 2024, down from a peak of 281 such colleges in the 1960s.
Men's colleges in the United States are primarily, though not exclusively, those categorized as being undergraduate, bachelor's degree-granting single-sex institutions that admit only men. In the United States, male-only undergraduate higher education was the norm until the 1960s. The few remaining well-known men's colleges are traditional independent liberal arts colleges, though at present the majority are institutions of learning for those preparing for religious vocations, primarily in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Jewish religious traditions.
The transgender rights movement is a movement to promote the legal status of transgender people and to eliminate discrimination and violence against transgender people regarding housing, employment, public accommodations, education, and health care. A major goal of transgender activism is to allow changes to identification documents to conform with a person's current gender identity without the need for gender-affirming surgery or any medical requirements, which is known as gender self-identification. It is part of the broader LGBT rights movements.
Campus Pride is an American national nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization founded by M. Chad Wilson, Sarah E. Holmes and Shane L. Windmeyer in 2001 which serves lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) and ally student leaders and/or campus organization in the areas of leadership development, support programs and services to create safer, more inclusive LGBT-friendly colleges and universities.
Athlete Ally is a nonprofit LGBTQ athletic advocacy group based in the United States. The group aims to make athletic communities more inclusive and less discriminatory and helping athletes to advocate for LGBTQ equality.
Simmons University is a private university in Boston, Massachusetts. It was established in 1899 by clothing manufacturer John Simmons. In 2018, it reorganized its structure and changed its name to a university. Its undergraduate program is women-focused while its graduate programs are co-educational.
Eli Erlick is an American activist, writer, academic, trans woman and founder of the organization Trans Student Educational Resources.
The participation of transgender people in competitive sports, a traditionally sex-segregated institution, is a controversial issue, particularly the inclusion of transgender women and girls in women's sports.
The term womxn is an alternative spelling of the English word woman. Womxn, along with the term womyn, has been found in writing since the 1970s to avoid perceived sexism in the standard spelling, which contains the word man.
Amber Jelena (AJ) Hikes (they/them) is an American civil rights activist and community organizer, who currently serves as the chief equity and inclusion officer for the American Civil Liberties Union. Prior to their work for ACLU, Hikes was most well known for their tenure as executive director of the City of Philadelphia's Office of LGBT Affairs, where they led the More Pride More Color campaign, which developed a version of the Rainbow Flag with black and brown stripes to represent people of color. Hikes, who identifies as a black queer nonbinary woman, emphasizes an intersectional approach towards sexuality, gender, race, and poverty in their advocacy.
