Women Education

There's something different about Robin Berman's sixth-period math class. When Berman reviews a homework problem on the whiteboard and asks, "Does angle C equal angle F?" the chorus of voices that answers is distinctly female. There are no boys here. Zero, naught.

There's something different about Robin Berman's sixth-period math class. When Berman reviews a homework problem on the whiteboard and asks, "Does angle C equal angle F?" the chorus of voices that answers is distinctly female. There are no boys here. Zero, naught. The all-girl geometry class at Capistrano Valley High in Mission Viejo is part of a pilot project to see if girls learn math better on their own--where the absence of boys may make them feel less intimidated about asking questions.

An anonymous donor has given $26.5 million to USC, designating most of the money to help attract more female professors into science and engineering and to encourage middle school girls to focus on science education. About $20 million of the gift will create new faculty positions in the sciences, upgrade laboratories, increase student scholarships and fellowships and pay for child care. The other $6.

Women with graduate degrees from business schools say a lack of female role models discourages many other women from pursuing MBAs. Other significant obstacles include not enough encouragement by employers and the incompatibility of balancing work and family with their education, according to a survey conducted by the University of Michigan and Catalyst, a New York-based organization that promotes women in industry.

It was 1963. John F. Kennedy was president. Betty Friedan had recently published "The Feminine Mystique," igniting the feminist movement. And in a vacant lot in Van Nuys with a couple of rundown bungalows, three homemakers opened a school where women could learn without the pressures of academia.

Hoping to add more women to an overwhelmingly male-dominated profession, Smith College officials voted to open the nation's first engineering program at a women's college. Smith officials said women represent about one in six college engineering students and less than one in 10 professional engineers nationwide. Classes are expected to start this fall. About 2,700 women attend the prestigious all-women's school in Northampton, Mass.

Leslie Small immediately considered his own romantic life when organizers of the fourth Black Women's Conference at Cal State Northridge asked him to host a workshop called "How to Love a Black Man (Without Compromising Yourself)." "I thought, 'How do you love someone like me?' " said Small, a doctoral candidate in urban economic development at USC. "And the best answer I could come up with was: from a distance." Small got a big laugh from the 50 or so women in attendance.

Six years after sounding an alarm on gender bias in schools, the American Assn. of University Women contends in a new report that separating boys and girls is not the solution, despite mounting interest nationwide in single-sex public education. "There is no escape from sexism in single-sex schools and classes," concluded the AAUW Educational Foundation, a Washington-based advocate for gender equity, after canvassing research on private and public schools in several countries.