Women Education

On the front page of the Los Angeles Times last week, there was a shocking photograph of young women clutching one another and shrieking in pain. This was not the scene of a mass murder, the aftermath of a plane crash or any other physical disaster. It was a picture from the campus of Mills College, and the agony we saw on these women's faces was the result of an announcement that the school planned to admit men. I know something about single-sex schools.

I admit it, I'm biased. I am a Mills College alumna and for two years after graduation I worked as a Mills admissions recruiter, taking my enthusiasm for life at that small women's college out into the world of boy-crazed high school girls and their weary, skeptical counselors. Two weeks ago, Mills College Trustees decided to admit men, a decision that set off a campuswide protest.

R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. plans to introduce a brand of cigarette soon that, according to the detailed marketing strategy prepared for the company, targets young, poorly educated, white women whom the company calls "virile females." Reynolds plans to test the new brand, called "Dakota," this April in Houston. The marketing plan's chief goal is to capture the lucrative market among 18- to 24-year-old women, the only group of Americans whose rate of smoking continues to increase.

Nearly 1 billion adults in the world can neither read nor write, the head of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization said. In ceremonies launching International Literacy Year, Federico Mayor, director general of UNESCO, said the number of illiterates has begun to decline for the first time in history. However, the education of women is still lagging, he said, and they make up most of the world's illiterate population.

Kabul University opened its doors for the first time since the Taliban religious army took control of the Afghan capital in September. The university showed the scars of 18 years of war. Because the Taliban bans women from going to school or work, there were no female teachers or students.

An attorney and high-ranking official at Dartmouth College has been appointed the first woman president in the 63-year history of Scripps College, a liberal arts school for women in Claremont, officials announced Monday. With the appointment of Nancy Y. Bekavac, 42, Scripps alumni won their campaign for a woman to succeed John H. Chandler, who resigned last year after heading the campus for 13 years.

Students returning to Santa Monica College on Monday will find something new this fall--a college-within-the-college devoted to women. According to SMC President Richard Moore, the new college, which will begin as a one-year pilot program, is the nation's first public two-year women's college. Why a college for women on a community-college campus? "Because it's time," said Moore, who said the idea had been gaining momentum for almost a decade.

Jane Kim wants to become an athletic trainer. The 12-year-old made her career choice Thursday at a conference held at Cal State Fullerton to introduce teen-agers to math- and science-related professions. "I always see guys in the physical education training field, but now I see we're equal and I can do it too," said Jane, a student at D. Russell Parks Junior High School in Fullerton.