June 23, 2005 | Read Time: 1 minute
Women and Philanthropy in Education
edited by Andrea Walton
Books and other publications on educational philanthropy tend to focus on big foundations and their support for male-dominated research universities. But Andrea Walton, an assistant professor of education at Indiana University, in Bloomington, writes that the emphasis on major donors tends to obscure the philanthropic contributions that women have made to education over the last 200 years.
These 14 scholarly essays document examples of how women have used philanthropy to improve and increase educational opportunities, and describe the challenges facing females both as donors and recipients.
The book is divided into three sections that explore three central questions. First, what role did women’s philanthropy play in creating new educational institutions, changing existing ones, and spreading knowledge? Second, how did donors expand access to education for women and shape their educational experiences? And third, how did racial, economic, regional, and religious differences among women influence their education?
The essays discuss prominent female philanthropists such as Catharine Beecher, a 19th-century founder of one of the earliest women’s seminaries; Mary E. Richmond, who headed the Charity Organization Department at the Russell Sage Foundation until her death in 1928; Martha McChesney Berry, who raised money for industrial schools she started for poor rural children in the South in the early 20th century; and Sydnor Walker, former acting director of the Division of Social Sciences at the Rockefeller Foundation.
Other contributors explore themes and trends such as scholarship programs for women, the philanthropic activities of sororities, and such nontraditional places of education as museums and religious missions.
Publisher: Indiana University Press, 601 North Morton Street, Bloomington, Ind. 47404-3797; (800) 842-6796; fax (812) 855-7931; iupress@indiana.edu; http://iupress.indiana.edu; 356 pages; $39.95; ISBN 0-253-34466-2.
