gender and power: sex segregation in american and polish higher education as a case study

Sociological Forum, Vol. 12, No. 2, 1997

Gender and Power: Sex Segregation inAmerican and Polish Higher Education as aCase Study1

Maria Cole2,3

This article presents a comparative case study of the manifestation of sexsegregation in higher education in the United States and in Poland from theend of the 19th century to the 1930s. The study is guided by a theoreticalframework, which is organized around a concept of power and derived fromThe Sources of Social Power by Michael Mann (1986). In the United States,well-developed capitalism, democracy, and the ideology of separate spheresunderlay the high collective power of men, their distributive power over womenand—consequently—high levels of sex segregation in higher education.Contrastly, in Poland, weak capitalism and lack of democracy meant lesscollective and distributive power of men, which produced lower levels ofeducational sex segregation.

INTRODUCTION

This article presents a study of gender inequality in power in theUnited States and in Poland from the end of the 19th-century to the 1930s.It links power inequality between men and women to sex segregation inhigher education and provides a quantitative analysis of the latter for thelate 1920s and the 1930s.4

1An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the American Sociological Association annualmeeting, Miami Beach, August 1993.

2Department of Anthropology and Sociology, The University of Queensland, Brisbane Old4072, Australia.

3To whom correspondence should be addressed.4The year 1939, which marks the beginning of World War II on Polish territory, constitutes

a "natural" closing date for this analysis. The institutions of higher education (as well as

KEY WORDS: gender; power; stratification; Poland; comparative and historical sociology.

0884-8971W/0600-0205J12.50/0 C 1997 Plenum Publishing Corporation

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The article starts with a brief critical review of some existing theoriesof gender stratification and segregation. A theoretical framework, whichguides the comparative historical analysis, is presented in the subsequentsection of the article. This framework, derived from The Sources of SocialPower by Michael Mann (1986, 1993), is organized around the concept ofpower.

The study relies to a great extent on "individualizing comparisons"(Tilly, 1984), which contrast political, economic, and ideological structuresof the United States and Poland5 with a view to demonstrating their impacton power relations between men and women and on sex segregation inhigher education. High levels of sex segregation in American higher edu-cation are traced to well-developed capitalism and democracy, which in theearly stages empowered men but not women, and to an ideology of do-mesticity, which provided an additional basis for the power of men. Para-doxically, the poor economic and political conditions in Poland werefavorable for some aspects of women's emancipation. Poland provides, then,a "reversing mirror" of the structures and processes that led to sex segre-gation in American higher education. At the same time, the inclusion ofthe Polish case extends the map of sociological research on gender.

THEORIES OF GENDER STRATIFICATION ANDSEGREGATION-A CRITICAL REVIEW

The best-known theories that apply to both educational and occupa-tional sex segregation—human capital theory (Polachek, 1978, 1979), so-cialization theory (Marini and Brinton, 1984), and social control theory(Jacobs, 1989)—represent the micro level of analysis. The focus of thesetheories is on social and psychological processes, such as the differentialsocialization of boys and girls; educational and occupational choices of in-dividuals, which are assumed to be rational and, therefore, different formen and women; or social pressures on women preventing them from en-

most of the secondary schools) were closed in Poland by the Nazi occupants during WorldWar II. Although higher education in Poland after the war was in many respects acontinuation of that existing in the period 1918-1939, it functioned in different economicand political conditions, and was influenced by those conditions. An analysis of sexsegregation in Poland and in the United States over the period 1965-1985 is presented inanother paper (Cole, forthcoming).

5Poland lost its independence at the end of the 18th- century. Its territories were dividedamong Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Women's strivings toward higher education were theearliest and the strongest in the part of Poland controlled by Russia, and the main ideologicalstruggle for the right of women to study at universities and work in the professions alsotook place there (Hulewicz, 1939). For this reason, the analyses of the period before 1918concern mainly the Russian partition.

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tering fields of study and occupations defined as "male." Authors of thesetheories aim at explaining why, up until quite recently, women in the UnitedStates have been heavily concentrated in a few fields of study and in a fewlower status professions such as teaching, nursing, librarianship, or socialwork, and why they have been drastically underrepresented in the higherstatus professions of medicine, law, and engineering.

In the United States during the last two decades the proportion ofwomen in the higher status professions has been increasing (Beller, 1984;Jacobs, 1989:35, 41), but the microlevel theories of sex segregation are notwell equipped to explain these changes. These theories, as some of theirauthors recognize, explain how sex segregation is maintained (Jacobs,1989). Explaining first, the origins of sex segregation in the Americanhigher education system, and next, changes in its level over time, as wellas comparing it with that in other societies requires going beyond individ-ual-level processes toward an analysis of macrostructures in which theseprocesses are embedded.

There have been, of course, some attempts at developing macrostruc-tural theories of occupational sex segregation, usually in the context of gen-der stratification. Some of these theories—such as those developed byBlumberg (1978,1984), Chafetz (1984,1990), or Sanday (1974,1981)-havebeen reviewed by Dunn et al. (1993). Dunn et al., and several authors whosetheories they describe, believe macrostructural theories of gender stratifi-cation should be "panhistorical" and "universally applicable" (1993:70).This approach is criticized by Folbre (1993:328) as being ahistorical andmacroempiricist rather than macrostructural. I agree with Folbre; I believemany authors whose theories are described in the chapter by Dunn et al.(1993) look for similarities in situations laden with differences and, basi-cally, ignore real people, real-life situations, and historical variations of so-cial structures. In short, a panhistorical macrostructural theory seems to bea contradiction in terms. This is because macrostructures change over timein the same society, and they vary between societies. The solution seemsto be either to analyze macrostructures in specific historical contexts andconsequently not panhistorically, or not to analyze them at all. In the chap-ter by Dunn et al., macrostructural perspectives on gender inequality havebeen separated from concrete macrostructures, as those are studied andunderstood in sociology, and instead, have received a positivistic treatmentunder the label of "macrolevel structural variables," such as level of tech-nology, external threat to society or warfare, sex ratio, control over meansof production, or labor-force participation.

I consider Hartmann's (1976,1979) theory of capitalism and patriarchyto be a more successful approach to the analysis of sex segregation. Hart-mann takes macrostructures into account and places at least some of

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them—capitalism but not necessarily patriarchy—within time and space di-mensions. I have proposed some modifications of Hartmann's theory, whichinclude the extension of the analysis from mainly the working-class occu-pations to the professions and higher education systems and the extensionof the base of patriarchy from the economic to the social and politicalrealms (Cole, 1993). In this article, I reformulate the concept of patriarchyas understood by Hartmann (1976:138) by introducing other sources, in ad-dition to the economic, of the power of men; and by using several aspectsof power in the analysis of power relations between men and women.

Conceptual Framework for the Analysis of Sex Segregation: TheSources and Types of Gender Power

According to Michael Mann (1986:2): "A general account of societies,their structure, and their history can best be given in terms of the interrelationsof... the four sources of social power: ideological, economic, military, and po-litical relationships" (emphasis in original). Power, in its most general mean-ing, is "the ability to pursue and attain goals through mastery of one'senvironment" (Mann, 1986:6). Gender stratification results from the un-equal distribution of any type of power between men and women.

As pointed out above, I trace sex segregation in Polish and Americanhigher education to differences in power between men and women in thetwo countries. I consider the four sources of power as distinguished byMann (1986).6 I also use his conceptual framework, which includes severalaspects of power—distributive and collective, extensive and intensive, andauthoritarian and diffused.

To conduct a comparative analysis of gender, a distinction between col-lective and distributive power (Parsons, 1960:199-225; Mann, 1986:6) is im-portant. Power relations between men and women, when they take the formof the domination of one gender over the other, represent the distributiveaspect of power. The extent of that domination depends, then, on the col-lective power of each gender or, simply, en the collective power of menwhen that of women is particularly low. In a historical study, the analysisof the collective power of men—the control they have had over economic,political, military, and ideological resources—creates a good point of de-parture for the analysis of distributive gender power and different aspects

6Sotiplogists usually do not distinguish military from political power, on the assumption thatmilitary power is monopolized by the state. This assumption, questioned by Mann (1986:11), does not hold, for example, in the case of guerilla wars or uprisings against the stateby part of its population. Since the latter took place in Poland in the 19th-century, thedistinction between political and military power is appropriate in this analysis, but it is usedmainly in the Polish case.

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of gender relations, including educational and occupational sex segregation.Therefore, power as a property that describes men—and not relations be-tween men and women—constitutes the starting point of the analysis (seeBlau, 1977:56).

Because the focus of this article is on higher education, the scope ofthe analysis is limited to the social classes that were the most involved inthis level of schooling in the period studied. The power of men of nobilityand intelligentsia7 in Poland is, therefore, being compared with the powerof middle-class men in the United States.

In the United States, the development of capitalism led to a dramaticincrease in collective economic powers, while democratic political structureswere responsible for the increase in collective political powers (Mann,1986:24).8 Capitalism and democracy empowered American men, but notwomen, in the period under consideration. The democratic and decentral-ized political structures of the United States made it possible for middle-class American men to shape many aspects of political, social, andeconomic life (Collins, 1979:79-129). Middle-class American men have al-ways had control over rich economic resources, and the free market econ-omy gave them power that was extensive and diffused (Mann, 1986:8-9).9

Gender differences in collective political and economic power wereconnected with the distributive power of men over women and made itpossible for men to control women's education and occupations. The latterwere additionally influenced by the ideology of the separate spheres of thegenders. This ideology, stressing the domestic role for women and theirsubordinate role in society, offered American men an important source ofcollective power, which could easily be turned into distributive genderpower.

7The intelligentsia is defined as a social stratum, which developed in Poland in the 19th-century, and which basically consisted of nonmanual workers. The other characteristics ofPolish intelligentsia in the time under consideration were a similar level of education (atleast secondary), nobility of background (in terms of the social, cultural, and "biological"origins), a relatively small number, and the myth of their responsibility for the nation(Zarnowski, 1964: 68; Chalasinski, 1958).

8Economic power is derived from control over critical material resources (Poggi, 1990:8) or,more precisely, from the monopolization of control over production, distribution, exchange,and consumption (Mann, 1986:24). Political power refers to the state—central, regional, andlocal levels—and to political parties. The confederal nature of the United States necessitatesthe use of a broader understanding of political power than that of Mann (1986:24-26; seePoggi, 1990:23).

9Diffused power will be defined later in this section. Mann (1986:7) defines extensive poweras referring "to the ability to organize large numbers of people over far-flung territories inorder to engage in minimally stable cooperation. Intensive power refers to the ability toorganize tightly and command a high level of mobilization or commitment from theparticipants, whether the area and numbers covered are great or small."


The action by men, described by some as social control (Jacobs, 1989)and by others as discrimination (Walsh, 1977), in order to be socially ac-ceptable, had to be supported by an ideology that defined certain statusesas "right" and others as "not suitable for women." Such actions provide,then, an example of the distributive power of men over women, which isrooted in their collective ideological power.10 If social control or discrimi-nation is exercised by social institutions such as universities or professionalassociations, we deal with authoritative power (Mann, 1986:8). Authoritativepower must be distinguished from diffused power, which is relatively spon-taneous, unconscious, decentered, and widely spread in a population. Dif-fused power results in "similar social practices that embody power relationsbut are not explicitly commanded. It typically comprises, not command andobedience, but an understanding that these practices are natural or moralor result from self-evident common interest" (Mann, 1986:8). Solidarityamong men which, according to Hartmann (1976) underlies patriarchy, isan example of diffused power. So is the acceptance by women, or men, ofthe values and norms characteristic of the ideology of separate spheres.The same aspect of power is reflected by the consensual behaviors of mid-dle-class American women, which resulted in the "self-selection" of verylimited educational and occupational options. Women's "choices" forcedby men's discrimination reflect the distributive aspect of the ideological (aswell as economic and political) power of middle-class American men.

A question, however, remains, about the relationship of the power de-rived from the content of the ideology of separate spheres to the otherforms of power. The development of that ideology in the United Stateshas been linked to the early stages of capitalism and American democracy,that is, to the growing political and economic power of American men (Ker-ber, 1980). There was a lesser development of collective power in Polandin the 19th and early 20th centuries. The subjugation of the country toforeign and often despotic rulers drastically limited the political power ofPolish men. The poverty and the economic backwardness of Polish societycreated the background for the much lower economic power (Kula,1976:176-178). Economic and political conditions in the Russian partitionforced the involvement of women in economic, political, and even militaryactivities, all of which blurred the distinction between the male and femalespheres. Consequently, traditional gender ideology met resistance amongthe Polish intelligentsia in the second half of the 19th century. The declineof traditional gender ideology in the 19th century suggests a close link be-tween this ideology and the historical conditions that underlay the low po-

10Ideological power is derived from the monopolization of three kinds of cultural phenomena:meanings, norms, and aesthetic/ritual practices. (Mann, 1986:22)

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litical, military, and economic power of Polish men. All these factors suggestthat the ideological power, to use Mann's expression, was more immanentthan transcendent (1986:23-24) in both countries.11

THE UNITED STATES

The Economic and Political Sources of Gender Power

In the fourth quarter of the 19th century rapid industrialization turnedthe United States into "the most capitalist country in the world" and "thewealthiest of all industrial societies" (Collins, 1979:76-84; Mann, 1993:137).Its gross national product, both absolute and per capita, was also amongthe highest in the world. While the enormous wealth of the country wasthe basis of the collective economic power of middle-class American men,the free-market economy made this power diffused and extensive. Alreadyat the beginning of the 19th century, most middle-class American men werewealthy enough to support their families and to provide them with a certainlevel of material comfort, so that middle-class American women did nothave to work for pay (Main, 1966; de Tocqueville, 1838/1956). The collectiveeconomic power of American men was intertwined with their distributivepower over women and gave men the capacity to control women's educa-tional and occupational careers.

While the wealth of society underlay the economic power of white mid-dle-class American men, the democratic and decentralized political systemwas the basis of their political power. As Mann writes, "The petite bour-geoisie, led uniquely by small farmers, achieved mass democracy in advanceof anywhere else in the world" (1993:161). This mass democracy was, how-ever, white male democracy. If, following Barrington Moore (1966), oneasks a question about the costs of progress,12 the answer would point tomiddle-class American women as one among several social categories, suchas African Americans and immigrants (Lipset and Bendix, 1967; Collins,1979; Morantz-Sanchez, 1985), paying the price.

11Gender ideology would be "sociospatially transcendent" when set apart from and aboveeconomic, political, and military power of men. Gender ideology as "immanent morale"intensifies the collective powers of men and their domination over women (see Mann, 1986:23-4).

12This point of Moore's analysis is stressed by Friedman and Scott (1993:xii) in their Forewordto Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. They write, "Progress, Moore finds, hasinvariably and inevitably required a huge measure of human suffering. If this continues tobe the case ... then one must be wary of those who promise paradise from market economicsplus parliamentarism, and one must instead ask who is bearing which burdens in anytransition."


The early existence of male suffrage may be considered a factor, whichdelays female suffrage and separates men from women (Mann, 1993:161,671). Since all adult white males possessed the vote by 1840, the advantageof American men over women in that aspect of political power that stemsfrom the right to vote (Blau, 1977:233; Poggi, 1990:113)—measured inyears—was about 80 years. Actually, the difference within the middle classis much larger since even in the 18th-century male suffrage was around50%, and it increased after the Revolution (Mann, 1993:142, 153).

With the infrastructural power of central government comparativelylow and that of state and local governments high, the United States wasthe "most confederal of states" in the period under consideration (Mann,1993). Education, along with other infrastructures and functions of govern-ment, such as those dealing with health and family, were under the ad-ministrations of individual states. The confederal state makes politicalpower decentralized and extensive, more widely exercised in society—mostly by middle-class white males. Middle-class political power was exer-cised mainly on the level of state and local governments and wasparticularly important in shaping American professions and the system ofeducation at all its levels (Collins, 1979:84, 93-129).

The channeling of women into a few fields of study and occupationswas a result of the control being exercised by middle-class men over highereducation and the professions. The professionalization of medicine, the ear-liest and strictest (followed by the legal) profession, resulted in the declinein the numbers of women students and practitioners (Hummer, 1976; Mo-rantz-Sanchez, 1985:356). Much less control was exercised by the academicprofession over the training of future college teachers, and this, coupledwith a high demand for teachers, resulted in many more women enteringthe profession of college teaching than entering medicine or law (Hummer,1976:79).

As we shall see later, American women's participation in college anduniversity studies was high in the 1920s and 1930s. Women's college edu-cation was to a large extent, however, detached from the occupational struc-ture, and its importance for white middle-class American women wasdefined in terms of its benefits for marriage and a scientifically run house-hold (Epstein, 1971:48; Lipman-Blumen, 1984:137; Morantz-Sanchez,1985:42-43; Solomon, 1985:156; Jacobs, 1989:46-47). A few occupationaloptions existed primarily for unmarried college-educated women. These in-cluded teaching, nursing, social work, librarianship, and secretarial positionsin business (Solomon, 1985:126-130). The social concern about Americanprofessions being democratic or open to the sons of farmers and mechanicsand, in general, to the "poor boy," coexisted with the belief that marriage

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and motherhood are the most important roles for women and, at the sametime, incompatible with a professional career (Hummer, 1976:72-73, 88).

Clearly, the high enrollments of American women in the system ofhigher education have not been transmitted into relative gender equality.The American system of higher education segregated men and womenacross the fields of study, with the women predominantly in the lower pres-tige fields. This process of segregation was rooted in the economic andpolitical structures and exacerbated by an ideology of domesticity, whichcreated another source of collective and distributive power of middle-classAmerican men.

Gender Ideology as a Source of Power

The rapid development of industrial capitalism in the United Stateswas accompanied by the ideology of separate spheres that granted womenmoral superiority and the responsibility of being ethical guardians of soci-ety, a task they were expected to perform within the confines of the home.The middle-class home was sharply separated from the outside world which,in the era of early industrialism, was socially defined as immoral and brutal.In 19th-century America there was a sharp distinction between the publicand private spheres, between the world of men and that of women, eachof them equipped with its own ideology (Lipman-Blumen, 1984:178-179;Morantz-Sanchez, 1985:53). The ideology of success (Merton, 1957) actu-ally only applied to white American men. The female equivalent was

...a domestic ideology that glorified the separation between the home and the worldand extolled female qualities of nurturing, moral superiority, maternity, andsubordination ... The ideology of domesticity did not merely reaffirm, it exaggeratedwoman's traditional connection with the private sphere. Dictating a limited andsex-specific role for women in the home, it reflected the real subordination inmarriage and in society... A belief in exaggerated female delicacy became decidedlymore prevalent in public ideology as woman's image shifted from that of a beinginnately sensual to one who was naturally moral. (Morantz-Sanchez, 1985:19, 22)

There have been some attempts to use the above beliefs as a basis forextending women's rights to higher education and work in the professions(Lipman-Blumen, 1984:145; Morantz-Sanchez, 1985:47-65). Had it hap-pened, the ideology of separate spheres would have created a basis of thecollective power of American women. In the long run, though, values andstereotypes characteristic of the ideology of domesticity appeared to bemore efficient weapons in the hands of opponents of women's emancipa-tion. They defined women's moral qualities as major barriers in this processand argued that their "natural tendency to sympathy" made women inca-


pable of achieving the emotional neutrality necessary in public or profes-sional activities. Women's entry into professions was seen as a step thatwould cause the destruction of these virtues and, since they are sociallyimportant, could also prove to be dangerous for the family and society (Mo-rantz-Sanchez, 1985:51).

At the same time, the ideology of separate spheres provided a symbolicelaboration of the position of housewife. The position of housewife wasideologically glorified and the performance of domestic duties was elevatedto a science by health reformers in the United States at the end of the19th-century (Morantz-Sanchez, 1985:35-43, 51). Since the small popula-tion, rapid industrialization, high wages in industry, and a shortage of laborcontributed to a reduction in the supply of paid household labor, theseobligations were taken over by wives in middle-class families (Chaplin,1964; Granovetter and Tilly, 1989:198).

While the majority of women were excluded from professional educa-tion by their domestic duties and the ideology of separate spheres, those whotried to enter it met institutional barriers and male hostility (Morantz-Sanchez, 1985:9,113,116-117, 313; Solomon, 1985:102). Women were deniedaccess to many universities, and those who graduated from women's collegeswere not allowed to join professional associations on the grounds of theirallegedly inferior education. Women physicians were refused internships andresidencies in hospitals as well as consultations with male colleagues.

Those men who did not go along with these norms were socially ostra-cized. Nineteenth-century female medical students described their coeduca-tional experience as an "ordeal" and recalled that the appearance of womenin mixed classrooms and in hospitals was accompanied by "scenes" made bymale students. Similarly, the behavior of male professors included overt dis-approval of female students. Hostility along male-female lines could be foundeven in those rare situations where female professors taught male students.For example, professor Josephine Baker's lectures on children's hygiene atNYU in the 1920s were "greeted by hostile clapping from the male students"(Morantz-Sanchez, 1985:113-117; 124, 164; Solomon, 1985:102).

These are a few historical examples of the distributive power of menover women, which was backed by the ideology of separate spheres—anideology emphasizing traditional femininity. If utilized by universities andprofessional associatipns, the practices described above provide an exampleof authoritative power. It is possible, however, that in directing women'schoices, this aspect of power was less important than diffused power. Thereis some evidence, for example, that medical schools did not directly dis-criminate against women applicants between 1929 and 1984 (Cole, 1986).Yet, the proportion of female medical doctors was between 4 and 5% fromthe end of the 19th-century until the 1960s (Morantz-Sanchez, 1985:49).

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The lack of discrimination against women by medical schools does not ruleout widespread exclusionary practices taking place within these and otherinstitutions—the diffused rather than authoritative power of men. The ide-ology of separate spheres, being accepted by both men and women, wasable to "trap" American women "within its organization chart of distribu-tive power" (Mann, 1986:126). In the realm of higher education, this ide-ology was a source of power that contributed to directing the majority ofAmerican women away from fields of study socially defined as inappropri-ate and toward those defined as suitable.

POLAND

The Economic, Political, and Military Sources of Gender Power

Polish women—almost exclusively from the Russian partition—en-tered foreign universities in the second half of the 19th-century when thepolitical power of men was drastically limited by the despotism of the Tsar-ist regime. The economic power of men was undermined by the backward-ness of the country.13 In the 19th-century, Poland under Russian rule hada declining feudal economy, followed by weak capitalism (Zweig, 1944:12,60; Landau and Tomaszewski, 1985:32). Several attempts at industrializa-tion, beginning at the end of the 18th-century, were frustrated by warsand insurrections and the repressions that followed (Zweig, 1944:11-12;Taylor, 1952:3-12).

The November Insurrection of 1830-1831, directed at regaining politi-cal independence, was defeated and followed by political and economic per-secutions exercised by the Tsarist authorities. The Insurrection resulted inmany deaths and imprisonments, the deportation or emigration of the par-ticipants, the confiscation of some estates, and the abandonment or sellingof others at very low prices (Leslie, 1956; Hulewicz, 1939).14 These acts of

13The fact that both the political and economic power of men of the Polish nobility in theRussian partition was very low distinguishes their situation from that of men in the twoother partitions, especially after 1864—a year that marks the failure of the JanuaryInsurrection. "Only in Russia did the authorities take active measures to repress an estatewhich they regarded as incurably hostile to the Tsarist order" (Davis, 1982:182). The Polesin the Austrian partition were given some political autonomy in the late 1860s. In Prussiathe repression of Polish political life coexisted with relative economic prosperity.

14After the defeat of the Rising, civil servants were dismissed from their posts, and all Polishofficers who had served during the Rising were fired and transported. Around 180,000 Poleswere deported to Siberia or drafted into Russian regiments serving in the Caucasus; anadditional 10,000 Poles left the country voluntarily, forming "the Great Emigration"; 254political and military leaders were condemned to death. About 5500 estates, which belongedto the nobles implicated in the Rising, were confiscated (Davis, 1982:331).


repression undermined the political, military, and economic power of menof nobility. According to Davis (1982:332): "In practice, the Kingdom wasruled by military decree. All civil rights were suspended, except for thegrace of the Tsar. The Army, the Sejm (Parliament), the Universities, allthe higher institutes of learning were abolished. There were no more po-litical events to record."

The ensuing cultural crisis, in addition to the political and economicones, followed the November Insurrection and undermined the ideologicalpower of men. Simultaneously, it made it easier for women to enter "ideo-logical structures" than had usually been the case (Smith, 1975). Accordingto Hulewicz (1939:50), the author of a book on women's education in 19th-century Poland,

. . .[Intellectual life changed ... in Polish society. The departure of theintellectual elite—writers, journalists, members of the parliament, military officers,in a word, a whole stratum of intelligentsia—for emigration, deprived the men'sworld of its best part and, thus, made it sterile. Those men who stayed in the countrywere pale and grey in comparison to women who showed growing deep intellectualaspirations. Women suddenly started feeling intellectually superior to the generationof men who stayed in the country. A phenomenon was born that Boy-Zeleriskivalidly defined as "the intellectual matriarchy."15

The November Insurrection and the events which followed influencedrelations between men and women. In short, the practical possibility formen from the Polish nobility to exercise power over women was low, andthe need for women's contributions in the public sphere, high. First, theprolonged absence of men in households made their control over womenpractically impossible. Second, since many women and children were leftwithout any means of support, women had to support themselves and theirfamilies, and in this way they were forced by circumstances to enter thepublic domain (Zawodziriski, 1936; Hulewicz, 1939). Third, while romanticpatriotism pushed some young girls and women into guerrilla units—inmost cases in men's clothes—and sometimes in the role of military leaders,other women participated in the Insurrection taking care of the sick,wounded, and dying soldiers, organizing help for prisoners and, later, forpolitical refugees (Boberska, 1893; Dobaczewska, 1922; Prochnik, 1948).Fourth, the emigration of the political and ideological elite created somevacuum in the Polish territories under Russian control (Reddaway et al.,951:311-335, 386; Leslie, 1956:260). It resulted in women gaining someideological and political power. In the 1840s women, of whom the mostprominent was Narcyza Zmichowska, a novelist, poet, and leader of a femi-nist group "the enthusiasts," became leaders of a political movement aimed

15Tadeusz Zeleriski (pseudonym Boy) was a leading literary critic, widely read in Polandbetween the two world wars.

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at regaining independence (Leslie, 1963:78). All these events reduced therole of all four sources of power as a basis of gender stratification in Polandin the 19th-century.

After the fall of the January Insurrection of 1863, Russian retributionwent even further towards the suppression of all public manifestations ofPolish nationality (Davis, 1982:364).16 Poles had gradually been driven outof public life and their places taken by Russian officials and administrators.Even in the countryside, the traditional rule of the local nobleman wasreplaced by the Tsarist police, who closely supervised activities of the peas-ant governing bodies (Davis, 1982:188). The Russian administrators confis-cated thousands of estates belonging to Polish owners. In addition, lawswere implemented which did not allow Poles to buy land or to accept itin trust in some areas (Reddaway et al., 1951:386-404). Since, "As mastersof the political situation, the Russians were free to act as they chose"(Davis, 1982:368), Polish men, in sharp contrast to middle-class Americanmen, had practically no political power. They had very limited control overthe economic domain, and almost no control over the system of educationand the professions which were under Russian administration.

According to Davis (1982:182): "Successive confiscations, impress-ments, and reprisals after each of the Risings, had the same effect. By 1864,at least 80% of the szlackta (nobility) were effectively declasse... It has beenestimated that in the last years of the Congress Kingdom one-quarter ofthe zadcianki (estates of the petty nobility) enjoyed a lower standard ofliving than the average serf."

In this situation many of the remnants of the formerly dominant socialclass moved to the cities, where they entered the intelligentsia and formedthe majority of the liberal professions. Although the sons of the dispos-sessed landowners were the majority among those seeking university stud-ies, the possibility of enabling women to obtain higher education and workin the professions was also considered a viable solution to the economicdifficulties experienced by many families in the formerly dominant socialclass (Hulewicz, 1937, 1939; Reddaway et al., 1951:393; Chalasiriski,1958:69-71, 89-94; Zarnowski, 1964: 89-96). Economic conditions contrib-uted to the definition of women's emancipation as an issue of concern to

16According to the account by Davis (1982:365): "In both Poland and Lithuania, the repressionof the January Rising left permanent scars. A whole generation of Poles were deprived oftheir careers, and of their normal expectations of advancement. Thousands of Poles tookonce more to the cruel road to Siberia, packed into cattle trucks or shackled together inlong lines, slowly trudging across the tundra to camps and prisons in the most distantfastnesses of the Empire. These were the cream of the Polish nation—the most active, themost courageous, the most idealistic men and women in society. Many of them neverreturned."


both men and women. The historian Hulewicz (1939) suggests that positivistwriters and journalists in Warsaw, in their arguments that women begranted access to all fields of higher education and all professions, actuallyanticipated the conscious strivings of the majority of Polish women (Hule-wicz, 1939:140,152, 163). In this sense we can talk about "sponsored femi-nism" in Poland (Cole, 1993).

Poland regained independence in 1918, and was designed as a liberaldemocracy, with Sejm (Parliament) being elected by universal suffrage. Incontrast to the United States, where male suffrage preceded that of womenby about a century, in that part of Poland which formerly belonged to Rus-sia, men and women obtained the right to vote almost simultaneously.17

Since political elites were mostly male, Polish men regained politicalpower. In contrast to the United States, the more extensive aspect of po-litical power generated by the democratic form of rule, however, remainedlow, especially after 1926—the year of the coup d'etat staged by JozefPifeudski.18 After this coup historians (Reddaway et al., 1951:612) believethat democratic institutions had been gradually "reduced to an emptyform." A democratic opposition both within the country and abroad calledthe regime, which emerged in 1926 and lasted until 1939, a "dictatorship."19

The eclipse of democracy in Poland reduced the extensive political powerof Polish men, and—a related element—the distance in political power be-tween men and women. In other words, most men and women shared ex-clusion from political power which became intensive and authoritative.

At the same time, the economic power of Polish men was low. Whencompared to west European countries and the United States, Poland re-mained underdeveloped industrially in the interwar period. World War Ibrought about enormous destruction in the Polish territory, and the GNPin 1936 was still lower than that in 1914. Real income per person was, onthe whole, low between the two world wars, and as measured in Interna-

17The Russian Constitution of 1906 introduced universal male suffrage, and the first Dumawas elected in the same year. The political power of Polish men was, however, limited bya very complicated and manipulated electoral process, which restricted the representationof minority groups. It was also limited by the practically intact Tsarist autocracy, and it wasshort lived (until the outbreak of World War I).

18Pilsudski was a Polish revolutionary and statesman, the first chief of state in independentPoland (1918-1922). In his youth he was a socialist and the leader of the Polish SocialistParty. Later he organized the Polish Legions with an aim to regain independence for Polandmainly through fighting against the Russians in World War I.

19The main political parties of the Sejm—the Christian Democrats, the National Workers, thePeasant Movements, and the Socialists—called a Convention of People's Rights in June1930. In their Declaration one reads, "Poland has been living for more than four yearsunder the power of the actual dictatorship of Jozef Piteudski.... and the people have beendeprived of any influence whatsoever over the Republic's domestic and foreign policy"(quoted in Davis, 1982:423).

218 Cole

tional Units, it amounted to $84 per year in 1921-1924 and $117 over theremaining period (Clark, 1942). In 1918, the real income of administrationand trade workers constituted 17.5% of that earned in 1914. In 1926, highschool teachers were making only 34.5% of their salaries of 1914 (Zar-nowski, 1964:183, 236).

The intensive industrialization that occurred in Poland in the 1930s wasto a large extent organized and controlled by the state (Zweig, 1944; Taylor,1952; Zarnowski, 1973; Landau and Tomaszewski, 1985). Between the wars,a large proportion of the intelligentsia, estimated between 50 and 60%, werestate employees. The state also controlled the professions, including the so-called free professions, through the regulation of their working conditionsand the rights of professional organizations (Zarnowski, 1964:302).

In short, the bad economic situation, the eclipse of democracy, andthe enormous role the state played in the social and economic life of thecountry underlay the relatively low economic and political power of mostmen of the intelligentsia in Poland in the interwar period. The historicalcauses of the relatively small gap in power between men and women inthe Russian partition were not, then, eradicated by economic and politicaldevelopments in independent Poland.

The analysis of the Polish case confirms Connell's statement: "[T]hestate is not inherently patriarchal, but is historically constructed as patri-archal in a political process whose outcome is open" (1987:129). One ofthe conclusions of my historical analysis is the finding that the existenceof male political and economic elites is not a sufficient condition for thecreation of the distributive power of men over women. The authoritativeand intensive power of men seems to be a less effective means of the con-trol over women than that which is diffused and extensive. In other words,the power of male political elites, to ensure the overall subordination ofwomen must be supported by additional factors: One of them is widelyspread political power rooted in a democratic system from which womenare excluded or in which they play a marginal role. Two others are diffusedeconomic power derived from a well-developed market economy, and theideological power rooted in some version of the ideology of domesticity.

Since none of these three conditions was present in Poland betweenthe wars, the entry of women into traditional male fields of study and pro-fessions met less resistance than it did in the United States.

Gender Ideology as a Source of Power

In 19th and early 20th centuries Poland there was much less distinctionbetween the public and private spheres, between the world of men and


that of women (Zarnowska, 1994), than there was in the case of the UnitedStates. According to the historian, Prochnik (1948:11):

Because of the conditions of life under foreign domination, the Polish woman earlybecame interested in political matters; she was forced to leave the shelter of herhousehold—where she was pushed by the customs and prejudices of the time—andto enter the public domain. When men were killed in combat, were imprisoned,deported, sent to forced labor, women had to manage not only their householdsbut also the public sphere.

Since an ideology often strengthens what already exists (Mann,1986:24), the fact that the public and private spheres were blurred in theRussian partition at the end of the 19th century made it difficult for aversion of the ideology of domesticity to take deeper roots among the Polishintelligentsia. Also, women's participation in military struggles along withmen, the help and moral support they gave to these struggles, allowed"male" virtues—such as strength, persistance, stubbornness, courage, lead-ership, and insensitiviry to the cruelties of war—to be seen as acceptableand even desirable for women (Boberska, 1893; Bialokur, 1928; Do-baczewska, 1922; Hoffmann, 1993). These virtues undermined the role ofgender ideology as a justification of the separate spheres for men andwomen.

It is not surprising then that in Poland the ideal of femininity formu-lated by Klementyna Tanska Hoffmanowa (1822, 1849) at the beginning ofthe 19th century—similar to that which existed in the United States—cameunder attack in the second half of the same century. This attack on theideal of femininity formulated by a woman, came from the Warsaw posi-tivists, mostly men. Eminent Warsaw positivist and one of the most famouscritics of that time, Aleksander Swie tochowski, criticized Tanska for hertraditionalism and caricatured her ideas in this way:

. . .[T]he woman is being handicapped by her very nature, created for suffering,serfdom, and the service of man. She is a zero by herself, obtaining value onlywhile appearing with another digit. Her name is nothing. Subordination full ofservitude, blind religiosity, tacit abnegation, sentimental patriotism, lack ofself-respect—this is the ideal of femininity described by Tanska. (Quoted inHulewicz, 1939:157)

Swie,tochowski and Boleslaw Prus (another eminent Warsaw positivistand one of the most famous Polish novelists in the 19th century) ridiculedthe social attitudes underlying the rejection by the Warsaw Medical Asso-ciation of the first woman to apply to become a member in 1878 (Filar,1959:7-26, 94). According to Hulewicz, "In the 1870s the debate overwomen's right to higher education that was going on in newspapers, maga-

220 Cole

zines, and in special publications seemed to be over. Public opinion in War-saw turned in support of women's strivings" (1939:139).20

The 19th-century tradition of the Polish intelligentsia, which favoredwomen's emancipation, was carried on by the state elites, some politicalparties, and the intelligentsia itself, after Poland regained independence in1918. The political elites are characterized by Davis as radical and anti-clerical. As he writes (1982:410),

The temper of political life was unremittingly radical. All the leading personalitiesof the 1920s from Wincenty Witos the Peasant leader and three times premier, toIgnacy Daszyriski, the Socialist, and to Pitsudski himself, professed distinctly radicalideas. Even the National Democrats, who formed the main opposition both to theearly coalition governments and to the later Sanacja regime, must be described as"Right-Radicals" whose stance on most issues of the day was anything butconservative.

Some information on the meaning of the "radical stance" of Polishpolitical elites in respect to gender may be found in memoirs. For example,in a memoir written by the first woman to be promoted to a high academicposition in the University of Lvov—that of a professor and chair of thedepartment supervising the work of both male and female faculty(Dorabialska, 1972)—one can find the name of Pitsudski who actively sup-ported that appointment.

Women's emancipation and their equality with men was supported bydifferent political forces, such as the Polish Socialist Party (PPS), on theleft, and the National Organization of Women associated with the ChristianDemocrats, on the right (National Organization of Women, 1928; Pr6chnik,1948). The Catholic Church that held traditional views on woman's placein society played no decisive political role during most of the period be-tween the wars. In the Consitution of 1921, it was granted no more than"the leading place among other religious denominations enjoying equalrights" (quoted after Davis, 1982:419).

A gender ideology that basically supported the pursuit by women ofprofessionally oriented higher education followed by work for pay was alsopart of the culture characteristic of the intelligentsia. This culture—whichmany have called elitist—included contempt for menial jobs (Chatasiiiski,

20In Poland, women's paths to professional careers were also probably eased by theintelligentsia's emphasis on manners and politeness toward women which was rooted in thearistocratic tradition. One of the first Polish women to become a student at the JagiellonianUniversity in Cracow, describes the relations between male and female students as "friendly,"and characterizes Polish men as "born with chivalry toward women" (Klemensiewiczowa1961: 151, 295).


1958; Zarnowski, 1964:166-167, 212, 268; Landau and Tomaszewski,1985:61). Generally, the values held by the intelligentsia led to the deni-gration of household duties because of their menial nature, not to theirelevation as in the United States. These values, being at odds with theAmerican version of domestic ideology, impeded the creation of a West-ern-type position of housewife in the families of the intelligentsia and cre-ated a cultural background for the use of paid household services. Theavailability of domestic servants—caused by the overpopulation in the coun-tryside and unemployment in cities—reduced the importance of domesticchores as a barrier to educational and occupational careers for the womenof the intelligentsia in Poland much more than for middle-class Americanwomen. Neither a gender ideology nor domestic responsibilities created astrong barrier to the pursuit of professionally oriented higher education,followed by work for pay, in Poland as they did in the United States.

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF SEX SEGREGATION IN HIGHEREDUCATION

The analyses in the preceding sections of the article have shown thatthe power of American men was greater than that of Polish men in almostall aspects considered. The fact that the political and economic power ofmiddle-class American men was so great—and that it was strengthened bythe ideology of separate spheres—allowed them to be more able than menin Poland to control women, including their careers in higher educationand in the professions. The next stage of my analysis is to show that therewas a higher level of sex segregation in American, than in Polish, highereducation.

The Early History of American and Polish Women in Higher Education

The beginnings of higher education for both Polish and Americanwomen go back to the 19th century. Many of the first American womento study were spatially segregated in all-women's colleges, and they werealso segregated across fields of study. While the fields of education, homeeconomics, nursing, library training, and secretarial work were predomi-nantly female fields of study; those of medicine, law, mathematics, naturalsciences, and engineering were predominantly male (Newcomer, 1959:53-58, 76, 89; Friedan, 1963:217; Marini and Brinton, 1984; Lipman-Blumen,1984: 143-152; Collins, 1979; Morantz-Sanchez, 1985).

222 Cole

The patterns of segregation in higher education between Polish menand women were different from those in the United States. The majorityof Polish women studied in coeducational settings of West European uni-versities. European universities were more elitist than American, and theircurricula did not include "female" subjects such as home economics. More-over, the general tradition of European universities was not to pay muchattention to the professional aspects of teaching, and to treat the functionof training secondary school teachers as a by-product of teaching the artsand sciences (Ben-David, 1963-64:271). Polish women were mainly studyingmedicine; fewer studied natural and social sciences.21 A smaller proportionwas studying engineering, mainly at the Polytechnics in Zurich and Ghentand Louvain in Belgium. Polish women in large numbers did not study thehumanities, neither did they study education (Hulewicz, 1939:205). Mostschool teaching in Poland did not require a university diploma and there-fore teaching was the occupation that many female students were trying toleave, rather than enter, while undertaking university studies. From thefragments of data we have on the beginnings of higher education for Polishwomen it appears that women represented a relatively high proportion ofall Polish students—at least at some foreign universities—and that therewas a relatively low degree of sex segregation.

Sex Segregation in the Polish and American Systems of HigherEducation Between the Two World Wars

Between the two world wars almost all institutions of higher educationin Poland were coeducational; all major universities were public, and onlybetween 6% of students in the late 1920s and 12% in the mid-1930s gradu-ated from private schools.

In this section of the article, the analysis will concern degrees conferredon men and women in the American and Polish systems of higher educationin the 1920s and 1930s, the earliest period for which Polish comprehensiveeducational statistics are available. Differences in the kinds of diplomasgranted by institutions of higher education in the two countries should notovershadow the structural equivalence of the systems as constituting tertiaryeducation in both countries (see Collins, 1979:120). Therefore, all the de-

21 Among them was Maria Curie Skodowska who finished her studies in physics and chemistryin the 1890s, and later became the first woman to win the Nobel prize in natural sciencesand the only woman to win it twice (Curie, 1939). Rosa Luksemburg, one of the mostimportant women in the history of international socialism, graduated from the gymnasiumin Warsaw and studied economics at Zurich where she took her doctoral degree in 1898(Ettinger, 1986).


grees conferred in either system of higher education have been taken intoaccount, resulting in combining data on recipients of the Bachelor's degreewith data on recipients of the first professional, masters' and doctoral de-grees for the United States.22 These data will be compared with masters'and doctoral degrees conferred in Poland. Both the American and Polishdata include virtually all students graduating from four-year college coursesand from universities in the years taken into consideration.

The Analysis of the Data

Data on sex segregation in higher education in the United States andin Poland are presented in Table I. For both countries the data include thenumber of graduates, the percentage of women graduating from differentfields of study, and indexes of segregation D.

An examination of the data reveals that in all the years studied therewere higher proportions of Polish women than American women in suchmale-dominated fields as medicine, agriculture, and law.23 Differences in thepercentages of women graduates from schools of pharmacy and, particularly,from schools of dentistry are even larger. While dentistry was a female-domi-nated field of study in Poland, only 1-2% of American dentistry graduateswere women. Moreover, the data clearly indicate that mathematics and thenatural sciences were not male-dominated in Poland between the two worldwars. Among graduates of these fields, 47% were women in 1933 and againin 1936. But while in the United States among the students of theology 4%were women, there were practically no women in this field in Poland.

On the whole, the participation of Polish women in male-dominatedfields of study was higher than that of American women. We must look moreclosely, however, at the meaning of these segregation differences. It is pos-

22American statistics do not report the distributions of first professional and graduate degreesby sex in the 1930s and, therefore, the data presented below are partly estimated. Theestimation is based on the total number of graduates in different fields of study and on thesex distributions of students enrolled in these fields. Sociological studies report high attritionof women from male-dominated fields of study (Jacobs, 1989: 120-121) and, therefore, theprocedure utilized has probably led to the underestimation of sex segregation in the UnitedStates. The lack of information on the distribution of bachelor's degrees between the naturalsciences and humanities led to the exclusion of the arts and sciences from the analysis that,probably, further decreased the indexes of dissimilarity calculated for the United States.

23The difference between the United States and Poland with respect to women law graduatesin the late 1920s is small. As pointed out earlier, however, in the United States theprofessionalization of law lagged behind that of medicine, and women had access to thelegal profession through part-time courses and schools nonaccredited by the American BarAssociation during the 1920s. At that time women made up between only two and threepercent of the graduates of schools accredited by the ABA (Hummer, 1976:70).

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sible, for example, that the increase in the percentage of women in a fieldof study was correlated with the decrease in its prestige or its future income.

It has been argued (Strober, 1984; Jacobs, 1989) that the average in-come earned by graduates constitutes the main factor dividing professionsand fields of study into male and female dominated in the United States.In other words, male-dominated fields of study have led to higher incomesand simultaneously were more prestigious than female-dominated fields.Data on incomes earned by different professions in Poland between thewars are difficult to obtain. Moreover, because of the cultural tradition ofthe Polish nobility carried on by the intelligentsia (Chatasiiiski, 1958; Zar-nowski, 1964:61), economic considerations might have been less importantin the choice of field of study in Poland than in the United States.

To evaluate the gains made by Polish women in higher education I usea criterion of prestige defined by the extent to which a field of study at-tracted students coming from the families of big landowners and the bour-geoisie. On the basis of this criterion, in the academic year 1934/35, thefive most prestigious fields were: law and political sciences (attracting 27%of all the students of landowning and bourgeois backgrounds), agriculture(12%), business and commerce (11%), humanities (10%) and medicine(9%) (Wittlinowa, 1937:52-53).

As we see in the table, among the students graduating in 1936 fromthe five most prestigious fields of study, from 16-58% were women. More-over, over the years, the percentage of law graduates who were womenincreased threefold, and the number of business graduates who werewomen more than doubled.

According to the criterion of prestige used, dentistry with 70-87%women would be equal in prestige to theology, with practically no femalegraduates (both 0.6% of students from the families of big landowners andbourgeoisie). Among students of theology, more than 40% were of peasantbackgrounds while of those studying dentistry, most were of intelligentsiabackground, with almost a quarter coming from the elite of the intelligent-sia—the families of free professionals (Wittlinowa, 1937: 52-53). All theabove suggests that women were fairly well represented in the prestigiousfields of study and, in addition, indicates that gender barriers were relativelylew in Polish higher education between the wars.

Sex segregation did, however, exist in Polish higher education. Its levelreflected the extent to which women were able to enter fields of study thatpreviously admitted only men. In Poland, unlike the United States, womenwere not "offered" their own fields of study and professions—a fact thatreflects an important qualitative difference between the patterns of sex seg-regation in the two countries. There are four fields of study that appearonly in the American but not in the Polish educational statistics. These are

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nursing, home economics, and library sciences with 90% or more womengraduates, and education with over 65% women.

Although it may be argued that the existence of these fields of studyat the college level is connected with their higher prestige, evidence to thecontrary is also available. It has been noted, for example, that while nurseswere given more formal training in the United States, they were, at thesame time, given fewer responsibilities and "medical power" than werenurses in Europe (Collins, 1979:146-147).

While the numbers of graduates in the humanities and natural sciencesin Poland include some percentage of future high school teachers, the hu-manities were among the five most prestigious fields of study and the natu-ral sciences followed shortly (8% of all the students from the families ofbig landowners and the bourgeoisie). Moreover, it is important to stressthat teaching was not female dominated in Poland between the wars(around 50% of all teachers and 32-37% of high school teachers werewomen; Gtowny Urzad Statystyczny, 1932-39).

Using the data presented in the table, I computed indexes of dissimi-larity, D.24 These indexes reflect levels of sex segregation in the Polish andAmerican systems of higher education. They can be interpreted as indicat-ing the percentage of women (or men) who would have to be redistributedso that each field of study would have the same composition of graduatesas the educational system as a whole.

As we see in the table, there is a consistent difference over time,amounting to 21 percentage points on average, between indexes of dissimi-larity (D) calculated for the United States and Poland. As expected, the levelof sex segregation among college and university graduates was higher in theUnited States than in Poland in the 1920s and 1930s.25

24The index of dissimilarity D measures the degree to which men and women are unevenlydistributed over a set of categories representing various fields of study. It is defined by the

following formula: D= 100 £ \(Wi/W)-(Mi/M)|/2, where W, is the number of women

graduating from field i, Wis the total number of women, Mi is the number of men graduatingfrom the field i, M is the total number of men, and n is the number of fields of study.

25The focus of this analysis is on the evenness of distribution of men and women across thefields of study that, following the literature on gender (Hearn and Olzak, 1981; Jacobs,1989), is considered to be more important than the high overall participation of Americanwomen in higher education. The participation of Polish women in higher education, althoughlower, was more tightly linked to the occupational structure. Moreover, while statistical datarefer to the whole Polish territory, the qualitative historical analysis mainly applied to theRussian partition (see footnotnote 13). In Poland as late as in 1934-1935 there were largedifferences among the former partitions in respect to women's enrollments in highereducation. While in the academic centers of the former Russian partition 32% of studentswere women, in those of the former Austrian partition 24% of students were women. Amongmedical students, 22% were women in Warsaw (former Russian partition), and 12% werewomen in Krakow (former Austrian partition; Wittlinowa, 1937).


SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

Bringing macrostructures back into "macrostructural perspectives" ongender inequality and segregation, advocated recently by Folbre (1993), hasbeen one of the goals of this article. A comparative historical study of thetwo cases featuring contrasting structural conditions has been chosen as ameans to accomplish this goal. The study has been guided by a theoreticalframework organized around a concept of power and derived from Mann(1986).

Consistently with Hartmann's (1976) insight, capitalist developmentappeared to be connected with high levels of sex segregation in Americanhigher education in the 1920s and 1930s. So was democracy—the otherstructural component of the analysis. Capitalism and democracy in theirearly phases of development transformed American society in a way thatempowered men and created the large gap in the collective power of menand that of women. The gender gap in political and economic power,strengthened by the ideology of separate spheres, underlay the distributivepower of men over women and made it possible for men to control women'seducational careers. All the above led to high levels of sex segregation inhigher education in the United States.

In contrast, when Polish women entered universities in the 19th cen-tury, the power of nobility and intelligentsia Polish men was low, havingbeen undermined by the despotic rule of the Tsars and the economic back-wardness of the country. The breakdown of democracy and weak capitalismwere also a reality in Poland between the wars. Weak capitalism and a lowlevel of industrialization acted against the development of the position ofhousewife among the Polish intelligentsia as well as against the develop-ment of an ideology of domesticity. All the above facilitated the economicand educational emancipation of certain groups of women and contributedto the fact that the level of sex segregation in the Polish higher educationsystem was lower than that in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s.

This study has seen the particular historical constellation of developedcapitalism and democracy as empowering men but not women and, as such,unfavorable for gender equality in the United States. Further transforma-tions of capitalism and democracy might, however, have changed things. Inthe long run, women's suffrage, growing financial independence and politi-cal organization have been changing the balance of power between thesexes in the United States. Accordingly, the gap in sex segregation betweenthe Polish and American educational systems has been shrinking over time(Cole, forthcoming). In more general terms, the relationship between capi-talist development and patterns of women's participation in higher educa-

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tion—characterized by the high levels of sex segregation—suggested for theinterwar period might recently have been erased or even reversed.

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