This chapter discusses whether women’s universities will have a strong sense of direction in the years to come. Women’s education has long been a topic of special interest to social scientists, but researched within the context of education at women’s universities, university management, or gender topics. The focus here is on educating women to become professionals, and providing an invaluable learning environment that gives social and diverse educational opportunities to female students.

Introduction

Women’s colleges and universities became very popular in Japan after the end of World War II. As of 2016, with over 800 four-year universities in the nation, there were 77 women’s universities, comprising two national universities, two public universities, and 73 private universities, which demonstrates that the number of women’s universities is still about 10% of all universities in Japan, although it has been declining since the 2000s.

It is widely recognized, on the other hand, that the number of women’s universities and colleges both in the USA and Britain, which had existed for over 100 years, has dropped rapidly. Some of them became co-educational colleges like Vassar College, some were fully incorporated into universities, like Radcliffe College at Harvard University, and some were even closed.

In Europe and in the US, women started to receive the opportunity for higher education in the second half of the 19th century. In those days it was possible for only very few women to have a traditional higher education, or enter a prestigious university in Europe. As an attempt to provide that opportunity, women’s colleges were originally established to provide women with education equivalent to that provided in the men-only universities or colleges in the US and in Britain.

Although there are still many women’s colleges in Japan, as mentioned above, today in the 21st century the roles of Japanese women’s universities in the international community need to be reviewed. Both in the UK and in the US, most women’s colleges or universities have tended to go co-educational in the last 60 years. Now more than ever is the time that women’s colleges in Japan are expected to look ahead to the future of women in the world. Are women’s universities in Japan to be replaced by co-educational universities, and follow this trend occurring in the international community of the 21st century, or are they to continue in their own special role?

To begin with, here is a brief background as to how women’s higher education has developed in Japan.