"the ratio of male-to-female under- graduates in the United States was about at parity from 1900 to 1930.

I found an interesting fact while reading Jonathan Last’s new book What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster. It seems that women pursuing college in earlier times was equal to that of men attending:

Although the fact is not widely known, the ratio of male-to-female under- graduates in the United States was about at parity from 1900 to 1930. Male enrollments began to increase relative to female enrollments in the 1930s and later as GIs returned from World War II. A highpoint of gender imbalance in college attendance was reached in 1947 when undergraduate men outnumbered women 2.3 to 1. But starting then and continuing until the present in an almost unbroken trend, female college enrollments have increased relative to male enrollments.

We always hear from feminists and others that women were short-changed forever in the US in terms of education, but apparently, they were attending college in equal numbers to men earlier in our history. However, you rarely hear this mentioned.