Yale Needs Women: How the First Group of Girls Rewrote the Rules of an Ivy League Giant

Summary

In the winter of 1969, from big cities to small towns, young women across the country sent in applications to Yale University for the first time. The Ivy League institution dedicated to graduating "one thousand male leaders" each year had finally decided to open its doors to the nation's top female students. The landmark decision was a huge step forward for women's equality in education. Or was it?

The experience the first undergraduate women found when they stepped onto Yale's imposing campus was not the same one their male peers enjoyed. Isolated from one another, singled out as oddities and sexual objects, and barred from many of the privileges an elite education was supposed to offer, many of the first girls found themselves immersed in an overwhelmingly male culture they were unprepared to face. Yale Needs Women is the story of how these young women fought against the backward-leaning traditions of a centuries-old institution and created the opportunities that would carry them into the future.

Note: This audiobook includes bonus content featuring the real voices behind Yale Needs Women: exclusive excerpts from author Anne Perkins's interviews with Shirley Daniels, Kit McClure, Lawrie Mifflin, Connie Royster, and Elizabeth Spahn.