‘Intellectually Stagnant’

Press, Volume CI, Issue 30005, 14 December 1962, Page 2

‘Intellectually Stagnant’

I By

SUSAN VAUGHAN)

LONDON. To those who were under the impression that women, and American women in particular, were making remarkable strides in a man’s world, the words of Virginia Grocheron Gillderaleeve will come as a surprise. In a new book, which is being much quoted at the moment, she says that women are intellectually stagnant. “I think that women are worse off now than they were 30 to 40 years ago,” she says. “I attribute this partly to over-emphasis of sex. It tends to make women interested only in getting married.” Miss Gildensleeve has never married. Dean of Barnard College for women at Columbia University from 1911 to 1947, Miss Gildensleeve is one of America’s foremost educators, and has sent many a controversial statement echoing through the halls of learning. She once campaigned against official verbosity in America, taking as an example a notice to be seen in New York shops:—“lllumination is required to be extinguished before these premises are closed to business.” She said thoughtfully: "I guess that means, ‘Turn the lights out before you go’.” Her campaigns have taken her into some impressive places. She was, for example, on the American delegation at the foundation meeting of the United

Nations in San Francisco in 1945. Even a>t 85 she swings some mighty punches—such as her remarks about intellectually stagnant women, and her recent suggestion: ‘ ‘Conscript women for nursing, home help, and teaching, as we do their brothers in the armed services.”—(All rights reserved.)