TY - THES
AU - Cynthia Farr Brown
AB - This historical study examines the structures and outcomes of pre-1940 female leadership in higher education, using case studies from leading women's colleges, two secular (Bryn Mawr and Wellesley) and two Catholic-sponsored (College of New Rochelle and Trinity.) It reconstructs and evaluates women leaders' work in areas such as fundraising, institutional advancement, and community-building. It incorporates various secondary sources, including literature on female education, leadership studies, and women's psychology and history, into its interpretive framework.

This study documents the existence of pioneer, bridge or transitional, and second leadership generations. The pioneer and bridge leaders were often more individualistic and faced greater personal obstacles than their successors, affecting their respective styles and achievements. In all cases there was a shift from centralized, often personal leadership to decentralized decision-making in which constituent groups such as students and faculty held increasing power.

Though decision-making varied by institution, pioneer and bridge leaders shared fundamental similarities: they had reinforced and embodied power, and they built or maintained organic and embedded communities. Reinforced power existed in their cumulative, multiple roles. Embodied power was close identification with roles, such that others believed them to personally incorporate institutional ethos. Organic community was the ideal of the single, renewable community, formed without regard to class or status, to promote particular values. Embedded communities were the intersecting, mutually dependent spheres of those women's colleges, reform, and professional networks which upheld and validated one another.

By the 1920s and the emergence of the second generation, however, the secular and Catholic leaderships began following different paths. The secular leaders faced dwindling professional opportunities, suspicion of single women, preference for married men as college presidents, and an uneven ideological defense of women's communities, including their own. They responded by trying to maintain communal homogeneity, leading to increased elitism. Catholic leaders faced no such challenges, and indeed found their leadership cemented by church and cultural preference for religiously-led, single-sex education. They thus expanded the scope and vision of their leadership at the same time the secular leaders were stymied by social pressures and the perceived necessity of conservation.
LA - English
M3 - Ph.D. Dissertation
N2 - This historical study examines the structures and outcomes of pre-1940 female leadership in higher education, using case studies from leading women's colleges, two secular (Bryn Mawr and Wellesley) and two Catholic-sponsored (College of New Rochelle and Trinity.) It reconstructs and evaluates women leaders' work in areas such as fundraising, institutional advancement, and community-building. It incorporates various secondary sources, including literature on female education, leadership studies, and women's psychology and history, into its interpretive framework.

This study documents the existence of pioneer, bridge or transitional, and second leadership generations. The pioneer and bridge leaders were often more individualistic and faced greater personal obstacles than their successors, affecting their respective styles and achievements. In all cases there was a shift from centralized, often personal leadership to decentralized decision-making in which constituent groups such as students and faculty held increasing power.

Though decision-making varied by institution, pioneer and bridge leaders shared fundamental similarities: they had reinforced and embodied power, and they built or maintained organic and embedded communities. Reinforced power existed in their cumulative, multiple roles. Embodied power was close identification with roles, such that others believed them to personally incorporate institutional ethos. Organic community was the ideal of the single, renewable community, formed without regard to class or status, to promote particular values. Embedded communities were the intersecting, mutually dependent spheres of those women's colleges, reform, and professional networks which upheld and validated one another.

By the 1920s and the emergence of the second generation, however, the secular and Catholic leaderships began following different paths. The secular leaders faced dwindling professional opportunities, suspicion of single women, preference for married men as college presidents, and an uneven ideological defense of women's communities, including their own. They responded by trying to maintain communal homogeneity, leading to increased elitism. Catholic leaders faced no such challenges, and indeed found their leadership cemented by church and cultural preference for religiously-led, single-sex education. They thus expanded the scope and vision of their leadership at the same time the secular leaders were stymied by social pressures and the perceived necessity of conservation.
PY - 1992
EP - 502 pp.
TI - Leading Women: Female Leadership in American Women's Higher Education, 1880-1940
ER -