Why are there all-girl colleges but not all-boy colleges in cambridge?

Couldnt that be seen as gender discrimination?

And besides whats the point with them anyway? Doesnt the members of those colleges have to attend college wide lectures anyway?

Couldnt that be seen as gender discrimination?

And besides whats the point with them anyway? Doesnt the members of those colleges have to attend college wide lectures anyway?

but if they did get rid of the girls' colleges you would get a significantly lower numer of applications. think about all those girls from religious backgrounds, who wouldn't want to(or who's parents wouldn't want them to) live on a corridor near boys they didn't know, where they were sharing facilities with boys they didn't know etc. there's still a suprisingly large number of people brought up in that sort of culture. doesn't mean they should be denied the opportunity to go to oxbridge if they can

If what you say is correct, then Newnham and New Hall are full of a mixture of muslim girls who were forced to apply there through cultural influences that the rest of Britain left behind centuries ago, and others who were pooled there and would actually rather be at a mixed college. That doesn't seem a healthy mix.

If what you say is correct, then Newnham and New Hall are full of a mixture of muslim girls who were forced to apply there through cultural influences that the rest of Britain left behind centuries ago, and others who were pooled there and would actually rather be at a mixed college. That doesn't seem a healthy mix.

Also, if what you say is to be taken as the main reason for maintaining the all-girls colleges, I don't think that that the university can or should go so far to pander cultural beliefs which are essentially at odds with British culture. Maybe a selection of other colleges could have all-female corridors or self-contained flats for those who require them.

Incidentally out of the dozen or so Newnham/New Hall girls I've met none have applied there -- in fact, they've all been quite keen to say early on that they were pooled, it's a "I'm not weird, I didn't actually want to go to a single-sex college" idea which they want to make clear!

Essentially, I think single-sex colleges are a historical anomaly that ought to be corrected.

first of all, i never said the colleges consisted entirely of muslim girls stuck in old traditional ways. if you look at the make-up of our society today though, there ARE a number of girls from VARIOUS religious/cultural backgrounds who would choose a single-sex college for whatever reason. Other unis are more flexible in that there is no obligation to live in college accomodation- as long as cambridge stipulates that you have to remain in residence, i think there should be some choice.

i think single-sex corridors are a good idea, however i only know of a couple of colleges which operate such a policy- until this number grows we need the womens' colleges.

and anyway, regarding the men/women ratio- we're just about 1:1 WITH the womens' colleges, no? if they became mixed, this ratio would cease to exist

Ironically, it's more the Newnham/New Hall supervisors who are militant feminists than the students, at least in Classics...

I think this thread needs a bit of rebalancing here. I applied to Newnham out of choice and I am not a) religious b) pressurised by protective parents c) a lesbian d) a radical feminist with plans to dig a moat around the college and plant a flag on the roof declaring Newnham to be the new Lesbos.

I do however think that Newnham stands as a good reminder of how far gender equality has come over the past few centuries. As I wrote in another thread a while back, the campaign to allow women to gain full degrees from cambridge was repeatedly and, at some points, violently protested against until after the second world war, and colleges didn't become mixed until the last 30 years or so. The situation is much, much better now of course, but I personally value what Newnham stands for and how it reminds us as well that there is still some way to go before both men and women are treated fairly. I surprised myself by applying to a single-sex college as I have never been in that sort of environment before (and who knows, I may hate it) but something about Newnham appealed to me and reading about its history confirmed my decision.

Now please, stop being so negative about it all (this is a losing battle I know). You may think it's anachronistic and silly, but the applications to Newnham were this year at the university average so some people somewhere think that it's still a good idea.