Belonging and Wanting: Meanings of Social Class Background for Women's Constructions of their College Experiences

Data from 193 women who attended Smith College in the 1960s show that the women retrospectively represented college quite differently depending on their class background. Themes of both social segregation and academic unpreparedness were evident among the women from working‐ and middle‐class familie...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of social issues Vol. 59; no. 4; pp. 771 - 784
Main Author Ostrove, Joan M.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published 350 Main Street , Malden , MA 02148 , USA , and 9600 Garsington Road , Oxford OX4 2DQ , UK Blackwell Publishing 01.12.2003
Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Subjects
Class
Class Differences
College Students
Economic Elites
Elites
Females
Gender
Higher education
Segregation
Social Class
Social classes
Social exclusion
Social identity
Social Inequality
Social integration
Social stratification
Universities
Women
United States > US
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Summary:Data from 193 women who attended Smith College in the 1960s show that the women retrospectively represented college quite differently depending on their class background. Themes of both social segregation and academic unpreparedness were evident among the women from working‐ and middle‐class families, while themes of a continuation of family tradition were evident among women from upper‐class families. Interview data from seven women who graduated from Radcliffe in 1964 suggested that a sense of who belonged and who did not was keenly felt even by women from middle‐class backgrounds, and was also noticed by women from upper‐class backgrounds. It is noted that class plays a large role in constructing the markers that define “belongingness” on elite college campuses.
Bibliography:ArticleID:JOSI089
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I would like to thank the women who participated in the studies from which these data were drawn. Also, I would like to thank the researchers who collected data from the women from the Radcliffe and Smith classes, in particular Abby Stewart and Lauren Duncan. Thanks also to Suzie Ghosh, Amy Nusbaum, Emily Thiede, and Christina Valenti for assistance with content coding. In addition, my deep appreciation to Elizabeth Cole, Abby Stewart, Robyn Thoren, Alyssa Zucker, Irene Frieze and several anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. Portions of this article were presented at the American Psychological Association Convention, August, 1995, and at the Midwestern Psychological Association Convention, May, 1996.
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ISSN:0022-4537
1540-4560
DOI:10.1046/j.0022-4537.2003.00089.x