"In 1860, the first women students entered the University of Wisconsin in Madison, enrolled in a short-lived teacher-training program. There were no women faculty or administrators, no women on the Board of Regents overseeing the University, and no women enrolled in any other program or department. By the late 1990s, the world of higher education for women across the UW System had changed almost beyond recognition, with women students outnumbering men, and women serving not only on the faculty, but at the most senior levels of administration. Students at every institution in the System could take courses, and in some cases even major, in women's studies. This book traces the process of that change, from the earliest arguments over women's admission to the University through their acceptance as students on equal terms with men, to the mid-20th-century development of special programs for mature women students, and finally, to the development, beginning in about 1970, of the new field of women's studies. As students, teachers, administrators, and staff members, activists and scholars - or, in some cases, all of those - the women described in this book have been part of the movement that has insisted on their importance as both learners and producers of knowledge."--BOOK JACKET.