Most women’s colleges admit students who ‘identify as female’

All but three of the nearly 30 women’s colleges in the U.S. allow biological male students who “identify as female” – including “transgender,” “nonbinary,” “agender,” and “gender fluid” – to enroll at their institutions, a College Fix analysis found.

The three colleges are the College of St. Mary in Nebraska, Sweet Briar College in Virginia, and St. Mary’s College in Indiana.

The changing admissions policies have resulted in mixed responses from students and alumni.

Most recently, St. Mary’s College, a private, Catholic institution in Indiana, received considerable backlash when its board approved a new admissions policy to allow transgender women to apply. The college reversed its decision in December.

“This policy was so disheartening, it was a betrayal of the women and the college’s unique foundation and mission as a single-sex institution,” sophomore Macy Gunnell told The Fix this month via social media message.

To Gunnell, exclusively women’s colleges are important because they provide an encouraging and “tight-knit” environment and they are heavily involved in helping young women achieve thriving, successful futures.

“Going down the path of woke policies such as the policy Saint Mary’s implemented will only result in a detrimental loss of finances, enrollment, and trust,” Gunnell told The Fix. “Most importantly, it is not love to affirm anything but the truth to young students. Being a woman is not something anyone can do.”

Support for new admissions policies

However, other students and alumni of women’s colleges have praised the policy changes, and expressed hope that the three outliers will enact similar ones.

“There’s a number of dynamics at St. Mary’s with their decision,” Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive director of DignityUSA and Wellesley College alum, told The Fix in a phone interview this month. “Leadership for initial change acted with good intentions, but they put vulnerable people at the center of their failure; nonbinary and transgender people who thought they were welcome got that taken away quickly.”

DignityUSA is a group that works to promote acceptance of “people of all sexual orientations, genders, and gender identities” in the Catholic Church, according to its mission statement. The group disagrees with the Catholic Church teaching that marriage is only between one man and one woman.