SOURCE: "Education for Women and Men," in The Educated Woman in America: Selected Writings of Catharine Beecher, Margaret Fuller, and M. Carey Thomas, edited by Barbara M. Cross, Teachers College Press, 1901, pp. 145-54.

In the following essay, originally published in 1901, Thomas presents arguments for equality in the higher education of women and men.

A subject like this fairly bristles with possibilities of misunderstanding. To get a firm grip of it we must resolutely turn our minds from all side issues and endeavor to put the question in so precise a form as to make sure that we at least mean the same thing. Stripped of its nonessentials we shall find that the real question at issue has very seldom been seriously argued. Not, of course, because of its unimportance—it is all-important—but because its approaches are set round about with our dearest prejudices, especially if we are...