Fall 1970: 450 women arrive on Grounds, ready to claim their spots as the first female students ever admitted to the College. The following year, the College admits 550 new women, and in 1972, it finally becomes fully co-educational with no cap on the number of admitted female students.
Now, this fall, the University is celebrating its 40th year as a co-educational institution.
In the beginning, though, Charlottesville continued to be dominated by male students, especially in the early 1970s. University alumna Allison Schildwachter, who graduated in 1975, said the city and the University seemed unsure how to react to the influx of female students. As Schildwachter recounted, men at the University still behaved - especially within the social sphere - as if all their female counterparts were merely visiting. One of her friends, in fact, was confused when a fellow student asked her to be his date to a football game, until she realized he actually was asking her to be his date for the entire weekend.
But even asking a female student out on a date was unusual. Both Schildwachter and her classmate Mary Ann Huey remember how popular the tradition of "rolling," or driving down the road to get dates from nearby women's colleges, continued to be, even as the influx of women into the University continued.
"We were like the girl next door for the most part and 'going down the road' was still the main way the traditional Virginia man dated," Huey said.
This uncertainty toward women extended beyond the social sphere, with unexpected ramifications. University alumna Holly Smith was denied a Lawn room her fourth year on the basis that there were no bathrooms for women. This type of encounter was common among Smith's peers. Unlike their male counterparts, women did not have the benefits that following generations of University students gained.
The opportunities for female involvement on Grounds were limited, yet the stories that these alumnae recall are not filled with as many struggles as one might expect the first female students at a traditionally male school to encounter. For the most part, women of the early classes remember their college years to be filled more with anticipation than adversity.
"We applied to college and we were just excited that we were going to college," Schildwachter said, "We didn't think about the impact of being the beginning of co-education."
Nevertheless, driven by hope and the opportunities the University presented, female students established themselves on Grounds. From the beginning, there were several larger organizations open to women, such as Student Council and Resident Staff, but finding equal opportunities with male students often meant taking matters into their own hands - and thus creating their own groups.
"We were keenly aware that we had opportunities that our moms, our aunts didn't have. With those opportunities came an implicit obligation to make something," University alumna Sara James said about the class of 1983.
Indeed, women founded a multitude of organizations during the next two decades, and by the time Phoebe Yang became a student in 1987, it was no longer necessary to continue to create women's groups to match the men's existing ones. Yang believes that women of her class had equal opportunities with men to become involved across Grounds, so the focus instead shifted toward "how to relate successfully with men so they would want to follow [female] leadership."
Unfortunately, it took years for female graduates of the University to rise through the ranks of the professional world to provide opportunities for following female graduates.
"I'm passionate about networking," James said, who spoke last spring at the Women in Leadership Conference about the need for women to establish professional connections on par with male graduates.
Nowadays, many of the female students following in their footsteps seem just as determined to keep the advantages they enjoy from turning into missed opportunities.
"I think that a hard step is the glass ceiling you always hear of, but if you pretend it's not there, you can always break through it," third-year College student Lily Bowles said.
Seemingly, then, women of the University have come a long way during the last four decades, to the point where it becomes more difficult to discern differences with the experiences of male students.
Bowles, a committee member for the Women's Leadership Development Program, said she does not see an area where either gender of today's students would have an advantage over the other.
Stephanie Nguyen, University Programs Council vice chair of membership, agreed.
"I don't think female students run into barriers anymore," Nguyen said. "If you're driven, you'll be able to do what you're passionate about."
Regardless of whether this is true, the two genders may not always be rewarded equally for their professional accomplishments. Significant salary discrepancies between men and women still exist, with the largest wage gap occurring between white males and white females, according to the 2001 U.S. Census. At the time, white females earned 73.4 percent of what males earned. That gap did not notably decrease in professions requiring higher education degrees. Other ethnicity groups showed similar trends: Hispanic women earned about 85 percent the amount earned by Hispanic men, while black women earned about 83 percent of what black men earned.
Other discrepancies between the sexes could also exist. Nora Eakin, president of Feminism is for Everyone, said Studies of Women and Gender is still not a department. She also explained that the University's Women's Center "is highly underfunded and in the last semester especially, the lack of awareness in dating violence and sexual violence has become a lot more prevalent."
Nevertheless, students and alumnae have both seem to believe the University has made great strides in equality. Alumnae in particular are thrilled to see that not only do women have equal opportunities, but this equality is no longer anything but expected.
"One thing that pleases me is it seems that some things are just regarded as 'of course,' which for us were regarded as 'Wow, that's exciting,'" James said. "Of course women are at U.Va. Of course Katie Couric is anchoring the 'Evening News.' 'Of course' - as opposed to 'Fantastic, what another breakthrough."
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