Caveats to Accessibility: Does the Promise of On-Line Higher Education Programs Help Minoritized Women in Higher Education?

Structural Barriers To Accessing Higher Education

Prior to the advent of online learning, higher education was not obtainable for many. Goldin (1990) suggests that there are four historical periods that show women’s participation in the workforce and their educational obtainment. In the first phase, from the 1800’s to the 1920s, women who were primarily poor, uneducated and unmarried entered the labor market. These women were often employed as piece workers in manufacturing plants, or they were employed as domestic help in other people’s homes. These single women often then exited the workforce when they got married. Goldin (1990) indicates during the second phase, from the 1930s to the 1950s, married women entered the workforce in significant numbers, with an increase from 10% to 25%. These increases were the result of the rise in offices requiring clerical workers and new information technologies. In addition, there was tremendous growth in the number of women attending high school in the early 20^th century, and that made them more marketable. While married women during the first period often stayed home, married women in the second period had more opportunities to work outside of the home, however, their participation was negatively affected by their husbands’ income. As such, the higher his income, the less she would “need” to work outside the home.

In the third phase, women’s labor force continued to rise and was driven by married women (Goldin,1990). It became more common for married women to continue working even as their husbands’ income increased. One reason that married women worked more was due to the increasing availability of part-time employment.

The fourth phase, also called the quiet revolution from the late 1970s up to the very early 21^st century, women’s engagement in the labor force rose mostly due to view of young women in their late teens that they did not want their careers to be cut short by marriage and children (Goldin,1990). This view encouraged women to invest more in their education, which meant attending higher education institutions. This prepared them for careers that gave them status closer to men in the workplace. When the Women's Education Equity Act (WEEA) was passed in 1974, it was a significant piece of legislation which accompanies Title IX, the legislation which prohibits any type of sex-based discrimination in a school or educational program receiving federal funding. The emphasis of WEEA was to explore gender equity legislation that is centered on establishing and supporting women's equal access to higher education which focused on how improvements in access to education can thereby open access in other parts of society (Conrad et al., 2014; Niemi & Weaver-Hightower, 2020). The three main goals of WEEA were to promote gender equity in education, offer funds to make women’s equality a reality and to eradicate suffering from multiple forms of discrimination based on sex, race, and limited English proficiency.