What is the approximate percentage of women who attended college in the U.S. in the 1950s?

While more men than women attended college in 1910, it was still an era when most Americans (about 75%) did not attend college at all; in fact, statistics showed that in some parts of the United States, a majority did not get beyond the eighth grade. But among the number of people who did go to college, according to the 1910 census, about 66% of these students were men, and the remaining 34% were women.

A few comments about those figures: it should be noted that in 1910, many colleges still would not admit women, and a number of occupations were closed to them. It was also a cultural belief that a woman who attended college would probably never marry, which further discouraged women from graduating. It was considered an either/or situation for women: either have a career and be a "spinster" (an unmarried woman) or have a husband and family and not work outside the home.

That said, there was a steady increase in the number of women who sought higher education. In 1870, only about 11,000 women were enrolled in a college, whereas by 1910, that figure had risen to more than 100,000; not all graduated however, for reasons mentioned in the previous paragraph. And for the majority of women who attended a college in 1910, that meant studying in a limited number of disciplines: the most common was becoming a teacher, one of the few professions that welcomed women.