students

[Doug Henwood]

While we're discussing how much worse things have gotten, please indulge me
a panglossian moment: the status of women has gotten lots better over the
last generation. I went to a college that had started admitting women only
a couple of years before I got there (and the few women who were there were
occasionally called on in class to offer The Woman's perspective); now the
place is around 50-50. While even I fall prey to nostalgia for the
revolutionary moments of the late 60s/early 70s, women  were severely
discouraged from speaking; Ros Baxandall told me once of being shouted down
by the men at an antiwar rally. There were "career women," but they were
considered an oddity; there were "girl groups," but women weren't taken
very seriously as musicians; etc. Things don't always get worse, do they?

Doug