Becoming a woman at an institution concerned with making men: A qualitative study on the college choice processes, experiences, consequences, and construction of meaning for the women who gender integrated America's military colleges.

摘要

The voices of women who gender integrated America's military colleges have largely been left out of institutional histories and studies, and higher education histories and studies. In addition, little is known about why students choose military college options. The history of the co-education of higher education in the United States serves as contextual background for this study. Hossler, Braxton, and Coopersmith's (1989) three stage model of college choice is used to indicate the timing of the women's decision making processes, and Litten's (1982) model is used to explore the factors that influence college choice. Feminist theory is utilized to consider the ways in which women made meaning of their experiences gender integrating America's military colleges.; This study examined the college choice process for the women that gender integrated America's military colleges, their experiences while at college, and the ways in which these women constructed meaning for their lives from those experiences. The study employed qualitative research to conduct interviews with the first class of women at both the Department of Defense Service Academies and the state supported military colleges. As the researcher used a feminist approach to qualitative research, she worked to co-construct knowledge with her research participants.; Study findings indicate that background was a particularly significant influence on the choice processes of the women in this study. In fact, all of the women in this study had fathers who were in the military. The women also reported being drawn to a military college because of the institution's combination of both a highly structured and challenging environment. It was a difficult and daunting process for the women in this study to construct meaning out of their experiences at a military college.