‘What It Means to Be a Woman Is Not Static’: How Women’s Colleges Are Handling Transgender Applicants

Paul Schnaittacher, Mount Holyoke College

Back in the late 1800s, when “brain fever” was used as an argument for why women shouldn’t receive a formal education, Mount Holyoke College was among the first to offer an all-female undergraduate program.

But a lot has changed since the first women’s colleges were founded — today there are nearly 40 — and many of them have been grappling with one specific aspect of that identity in recent years: How should transgender applicants be considered?

Propelled by increasing social pressures and Title IX guidelines issued during the Obama administration, many of these institutions have rewritten their admissions policies to change and clarify who will be counted.

Mount Holyoke, for example, now says students who self-identify as women can be considered for admission, according to a policy statement: “We recognize that what it means to be a woman is not static. Traditional binaries around who counts as a man or woman are being challenged by those whose gender identity does not conform to their biology.”

The college further emphasizes its commitment as a historic place for women, partly founded on the motto “Go where no one else will go, do what no one else will do.”

But the direction colleges like Mount Holyoke have taken can be controversial, and the questions and decisions are full of nuance. At Wellesley, for example, both students and faculty questioned in 2014 whether admitting a transgender student who identified as male conflicted with a women’s college mission. (Wellesley now officially considers transgender women and nonbinary applicants, but not transgender men.)

But even with some internal pushback, it was only a matter of time before more women’s colleges changed their policies, says Lynn Pasquerella, former Mount Holyoke president and current president of the Association of American Colleges & Universities. “It was certainly at the forefront of public discussion and private debate,” she says, adding that the activism done by LGBTQ groups pushed women’s colleges to be more “transparent” about their requirements.

So far, more than a dozen women’s colleges have developed admissions policies for transgender students since 2014. This sends a signal to applicants.

“It’s wonderful that women’s colleges, once again, are playing a leadership role in meeting the demands of what is a fundamental human-rights issue,” Pasquerella says. “We want to embrace all women. Those values will win out in the end.”

‘Not Trying to Be the Police’

For many women’s colleges with new policies, it comes down to how applicants identify themselves. Cedar Crest College, which finalized its new rules last year, is among them.

Its admissions policy now says the college is committed to offering a women’s-college experience to applicants “who were assigned female at birth and/or applicants who self-identify as women.”

Cedar Crest, along with Mills College and a few others, does not require government-issued documentation for purposes of identifying an applicant’s gender identity. If there was a discrepancy between forms and self-identification, admissions officers would reach out to clarify. (Officials already do this kind of outreach when cisgender males apply accidentally, not realizing that Cedar Crest is a women’s college.)

Tatiana Diaz, director of diversity and inclusion at Cedar Crest, says the overall goal is to “provide education to the breadth of who identifies as women — to provide access to education to populations that have been traditionally marginalized.”

“Gender is much more fluid and much more complex than the conversation 20 years ago,” she says. “We are trying to develop a policy that is consistent with our mission and our diversity statement, but also while understanding that if things continue to change or evolve, we’d evolve as well.”

Kathryn Baugher, an enrollment-management consultant at Mills College, agrees. In 2014, Mills College was among the first single-sex colleges in the country to create a specific policy for transgender applicants.

“We ask them how they identify. We ask the pronouns that they use,” Baugher says. “Ours is an open policy, and we’re not trying to run around and be the police on this.

“If there is a dichotomy, as in someone is born a female, identifies as male, and uses ‘they’ or ‘them’ pronouns, then that’s not clear for us what that means,” she continues. “So we’d reach out to the student so they understand that this is a women-centric education, and we’d see if they’re comfortable with that — we try to be very clear about who we are, and what kind of education we’re committed to, and who we serve.”

‘An Ongoing Negotiation’

Some colleges faced controversy before they changed their approach. In 2013, Calliope Wong was denied admission to Smith College. Wong’s gender was listed as male on a Free Application for Federal Student Aid form, even though she identified as a female. She later went on to attend the University of Connecticut.

The rejection letter she received from Smith College, and then posted online, highlighted the various struggles transgender applicants were going through when they tried to attend women’s colleges. At the time, Smith’s letter told Wong that Smith was a women’s college, “which means that undergraduate applicants to Smith must be female at the time of admission.”

In a New York Times column from 2014, Audrey Smith, vice president for enrollment at Smith College, was quoted as saying that Smith wasn’t in the business of defining what constitutes a woman: “We leave that to other entities or agencies to affirm.”

By 2015, however, Smith had changed its approach, and it now considers whether a student identifies as being female as the primary basis for who is eligible for admission.

At Smith, there are more parameters on the policy than at some other women’s colleges. The college prohibits the admission, for example, of transgender men. For genderqueer or nonbinary students, the policy website emphasizes that the college’s focus is dedicated to women’s education. Deb Shaver, dean of admission, notes that students who are admitted as female but later come to identify as male will be permitted to graduate as long as they fulfill the college’s standard requirements.

Similar policies have been adopted at Spelman College, which in 2017 became the second historically black women’s college — following Bennett College — to announce a transgender admissions policy.

Among the women’s colleges that don’t have policies posted online about transgender applicants are some with religious affiliations: College of Saint Mary, Judson College, Mount Saint Mary’s University in Los Angeles, St. Catherine University, and Stern College for Women at Yeshiva University.

Mount Saint Mary’s University is one of several institutions with a policy under development. Debbie Ream, director of communications and marketing at the California university, says she cannot comment publicly until final approval from the university’s Board of Trustees.

Stephens College, in Missouri, is currently deciding the direction of its transgender admissions policy, but there is no formal target date for when it will be issued, says Rebecca Kline, director of marketing and communications.

Until an official change is made, Stephens will continue to admit women based on documents like Fafsa, not based on self-identification. Kline says this will be one of the factors that is ultimately decided by the college’s Board of Trustees.

Kline, who has been on the task force handling these discussions at Stephens since 2014, describes the situation as “an ongoing negotiation to educate ourselves as a community.”