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

by Anne Gardiner Perkins, Erin Bennett (Narrator)

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 "1,000 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.

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

Audible Audio

Published September 10, 2019

About the author

Anne Gardiner Perkins grew up in Baltimore and attended Yale University, where she earned her BA in history and was the first woman editor-in-chief of the Yale Daily News. She is also a Rhodes Scholar and completed a BA in modern history at Balliol College, Oxford University. She has spent her life in education, from urban high school teacher to elected school committee member. She received her PhD in higher education at UMass Boston and has presented papers on higher education at leading conferences.

When she is not writing or doing research, Anne enjoys hiking, tending her vegetable garden, and beating her son at board games. She lives with her husband in Boston and in Harvard, Massachusetts. YALE NEEDS WOMEN is her first book.

Reviews

[Gaili Schoen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book chronicles the gradual inclusion of undergrad women at Yale with the first small group admitted in 1969. The author tells a fascinating history lesson and we get to know the stories of many of the Yale women both white and black. I’m not a Yale graduate but found the stories compelling. Sometimes frustrating, sometimes terribly painful, and sometimes triumphant. Highly recommended to anyone who enjoys women’s history.