College is For Girls

After graduating from high school, women are more likely than men to immediately continue on to a college career, says Vermont State Senator Jane Kitchel.

"This is reflective of the efforts of having women look at the importance of education," said Kitchel. "Forty years ago, if you had less than a high school education, you could go in and work in a factory and earn a decent salary. The system could have a lot more dropouts and a lot more casualties and today, there's less margin for error."

Kitchel addressed about 30 members of Vermont Women in Higher Education (VWHE), at luncheon on Wednesday honoring new members and March as women's history month.

"I grew up with a lot of strong female role models," said Kitchel. "I went to a women's college and when I was leaving high school to go to college, we didn't talk about college as we do now, as it relates to workplace and job opportunities. I would have to say it was more in the context of what we would call today, 'self-actualization'."

In the 60s, Kitchel began working in the field of human services, helping single parent families and females who served as the sole breadwinner.

"...women, who are financially dependant, dealing with the demands of child rearing, and how to connect them back to the larger community and to the workplace. Education was a major piece of that," said Kitchel about the impact of education on the lives of women. "Vermont was one of the states that really looked at how we could support women to participate in higher education."

Kitchel stated that the Vermont State Colleges have a 52 percent female enrollment rate across the board, but Lyndon's enrollment is lower, at 44 percent. When it comes to areas of study, women are dominating the fields of education and social services.

 "If you look at the job opportunities and salaries for these fields, you're not going into them because you're going to get rich. I can tell you that," said Kitchel about the typical fields for women. "On the other hand, if you look at engineering and math, 81 percent of those students are male."

Faculty and staff in attendance also acknowledged the need for change, as they see and experience some of the challenges that women still face in the professional setting.

 "In my concentration, I have 60 to 70 male students and only five females. I can always count them on one hand," said Britt Moore, a music business instructor.  "So since the male students are always answering or getting some kind of instruction from me, trying to get them to take me seriously is always challenging."

For other staff, the challenges are more associated with the people they work with.  

 "It's difficult to talk about it. It's difficult to be a young female professional because, a lot of times, you don't have a peer group of other young women who are around," said Abby Robbins, who works in Upward Bound Program. "It's challenging to navigate that professional world of older males who are in authority positions."

"VWHE is an organization affiliated with the office of women in higher education at the American council on education. They're dedicated to serving women in higher education at all professional levels," said Renee Kelly, co-chair for VWHE and Community Outreach Coordinator for Leahy Students.

Membership is exclusively for women who are faculty and staff, and is not for students.

"For Vermont Women in Higher Education, that organization is about building networking between professional women in the workforce, more so than students," said Kelly.

Janet Bennion, co-chair for VWHE and social science professor, acknowledged the need for a similar student group for females on campus.

The luncheon is the one event that the group has every year to honor new members and those being reinstated.