University coeducation was controversial; what effect did the controversy have on Berkeley women?
Although coeducation was becoming the norm in western public universities, it was still not universally accepted. Its spread, indeed, ignited a new battle in the long-running controversy over women’s intellectual capabilities shortly after the Regents passed their resolution. Reacting against pressure to admit women to men’s colleges in the East, Dr. Edward Clarke, a former member of the Harvard medical faculty, claimed in an 1873 book to have scientific evidence that energy expended in the brain depleted women’s fertility and nurturing capacities, resulting in stunted females prone to nervous disorders. Although Clarke was a widely-respected authority, his opinions on women's higher education were forcefully disputed by graduates of Vassar and several western universities, who testified that that they had enjoyed both academic success and robust health. They did not, though, dispute Clarke’s idea that women’s intellectual natures were different from men’s; instead they argued that coeducation could bring out the strengths of both (Rosenberg, 1-53).
The controversy over coeducation reverberated through women’s experience in Berkeley for decades, profoundly shaping their place in the university. Although they had been admitted, they were expected to remain a distinct minority, separate and by no means equal to the young men, who were entrusted to organize and discipline the student body. Echoes of Dr. Clarke’s opinions about physically depleted coeds can be heard in the humorous writings of male Berkeley undergraduates, which satirized women students as scrawny, snappish, and awkward “pelicans” (Gordon, 73-77). There were numerous restrictions on their participation in campus activities and off-campus clubs. And eventually they were obliged to accommodate the prevailing assumption of sexual exclusivity by organizing and building a system of entirely separate women’s organizations. Thus sexual separation and implicit gender hierarchy inside coeducation were the rules at Berkeley for many decades.