Educated in Romance: Women, Achievement, and College Culture

by Dorothy C. Holland, Margaret A. Eisenhart, Raewyn W. Connell (Foreword)

Is romance more important to women in college than grades are? Why do so many women enter college with strong academic backgrounds and firm career goals but leave with dramatically scaled-down ambitions? Dorothy C. Holland and Margaret A. Eisenhart expose a pervasive "culture of romance" on a high-pressure peer system that propels women into a world where their attractiveness to men counts most.

Genres: Education, Feminism, Academic, Sociology, Gender

288 pages, Paperback

First published June 20, 1991

Reviews

[Annie Kelly]

Yes, even I must occasionally stop reading for fun to read for school. Had to read this ethnography for a presentation on Tuesday (thank god I can read so quickly!) but you know . . . It was pretty good.

Focusing on two Southern colleges, one primarily black and one primarily white, it looks at how peer groups influence how female attractiveness is interpreted and how well young women assimilate/acclimate to it. It also looks at how attitudes towards school and the reality of college can effect career aspirations (the original study was looking at why science/math oriented women were not pursuing those careers) often in favor of heterosexual relationships.

[Tiny Pants]

Someone needs to do a follow-up to this fascinating study, in which the authors followed (via interview) the progress of a group of ambitious young college women at two southern colleges (a large university and a historically black college) through to young adulthood. Holland and Eisenhart are interested in the reproduction of culture and inequalities, and in challenging and adding to the literature in this area (particularly from the Birmingham school) with their longitudinal work. Their original interest in studying women and schooling morphs into studying women and romance, as they find how much attractiveness, dating, and what they refer to as "the sexual auction block" organizes the lives of their subjects. Similarly, changing attitudes toward school combine with these peer-group structures to create very different outcomes for these women than those they'd originally intended as college freshmen. The analysis is nuanced enough to avoid a "blaming the victim" sort of approach, and by studying a group of slightly older, well-educated, (initially) upwardly mobile women, Holland and Eisenhart make an important contribution to a literature which tends to focus on younger, lower-class, less-school-oriented girls (e.g., McRobbie, Lees, Bettie).

[JwW White]

This is a fascinating look at how young women are taught to buy into the idea of romantic love above other forms of life and learning. Holland and Eisenhart use case studies to show how young women often sell themselves short academically in lieu of stereotyped notions of their roles in relationships.

[Sherry]

Brilliant. True during my college days - maybe still?