As the Trump administration calls higher ed leaders to task over DEI, campus protests, trans athletes and other issues, women’s colleges have largely been left alone.

That is, until a conservative legal group filed an Office for Civil Rights complaint against Smith College last month.

The group, Defending Education, alleges the Massachusetts liberal arts college’s policy of admitting trans students is violating Title IX because the “accommodations for so-called gender identity encroach upon sex-specific programs and spaces.”

“Smith’s gender-identity-based Equal Opportunity Policy; its admissions policy, which accepts natal men in lieu of similarly situated female applicants; and its all-gender restroom and locker room policies, which divest female students of their privacy, safety, and equal educational opportunity, all appear to violate Title IX,” read a Defending Education press release.

A Smith spokesperson wrote to Inside Higher Ed that college leaders are aware of the group’s complaint but have not received any notice from the Office for Civil Rights.

The complaint raises questions about how the country’s 30 women’s colleges are navigating a presidential administration so invested in defining gender and controlling its expression.

During President Donald Trump’s first month in office, he signed an executive order that the U.S. recognizes “two sexes, male and female.” A month later, he issued an order banning trans athletes and reverted to 2020 Title IX regulations, without protections for trans students. The majority of women’s colleges, though not all, now admit trans women. Federal agencies have also put outsized focus on gender, using lists of key terms—with words like “female” and “male-dominated”—to make decisions about funding cuts. Cancelled grants have included research projects on maternal mortality and intimate partner violence during pregnancy, among other topics.

Against that backdrop, women’s college leaders feel like their institutions are uniquely challenged by the political landscape.

Mary Dana Hinton, president of Hollins University in Virginia, said institutions like hers “were founded to address issues of equity and inclusion.” The earliest women’s colleges, including Hollins, sprung up in the 19th century to give women access to a college education, which was “revolutionary at the time,” Hinton said. Over the last two decades in particular, women’s colleges “have been working on issues of inclusion and equity with a deep ferocity,” serving increasingly diverse student bodies.

“We can and will thrive,” she said of the current political moment. “At the same time, when there are movements to remove words like ‘women’ or ‘equity,’ it becomes a direct challenge to our very mission.”

‘Refuges’ at Risk

A women’s college official, who asked to remain anonymous, said college leaders at her institution are looking “very closely” at executive orders related to gender.

She wants “to ensure that, one, we can continue to be women’s colleges that are distinct—and we know that we have that ability currently under the law—and two, that we have the ability to continue to teach about women’s identity, their history,” she said.

She also worries for trans and nonbinary students and staff members who fear “their identity is being erased.”

“One of the things we hear so much is ‘I’m really glad I’m here on this campus at this time, because I’m afraid off this campus,’” she said. She wants the college to continue feeling like “a place that’s safe.”

Currently, 23 historically women’s colleges admit at least some trans students. Mount Holyoke in Massachusetts and Mills College in California were among the first to formally broaden their admissions policies in response to student demand, said Genny Beemyn, director of the UMass Amherst Stonewall Center and a researcher on campus trans-inclusive policies.

But the complaint against Smith threatens the institutions’ evolving role as “refuges” for trans and nonbinary students, Beemyn said. Most women’s colleges have come to understand their missions as serving students “who experience gender oppression—and not just cis women. This complaint with the OCR is trying to take away that safer space.”

Lynn Pasquerella, former president of Mount Holyoke and now president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, said she took pride in Mount Holyoke officially adopting a policy to expand “access to others who also face gender-based discrimination.” She wants to see women’s colleges fight to continue doing so.

“In defending higher education against President Trump’s attack on the academy, we have to return to the fundamental mission and purposes of our institutions …” Pasquerella said. “Women’s colleges were founded to serve those who were pushed to the margins of society, and today that mission includes trans women.”

She said she strongly disagrees with Defending Education’s assertion that trans students are taking away opportunities from cis women at women’s colleges. She believes admitting these students enhances learning for all students.

“There’s no doubt that trans students bring diverse perspectives and critical insights into gender identity and justice,” Pasquerella said, “because they often face disproportionate barriers to safety, housing, education. And we would argue—at least many of the presidents of women’s colleges would argue—that providing access to a supportive learning environment for trans students is not a political stance, it’s a moral and educational obligation.”

Unwanted Attention

Kristen A. Renn, University Distinguished Professor of higher, adult, and lifelong education at Michigan State University, said having “gender baked into their mission” leaves women’s colleges “vulnerable to people waging all kinds of attacks.” Yet they rarely get national attention.

“Most of the time, these institutions have to argue for their relevance at all …” she said. “Women’s colleges have to work so hard just to be acknowledged for what they do.” But now “Smith, at least, is being plucked out as a target.”

She fears women’s colleges could continue to face unwanted scrutiny. She pointed out that most women’s colleges are small, selective, private institutions at a time when the Trump administration is warring on the Ivies, including Harvard and Columbia.

“It would be easy to kind of paint [women’s colleges] with the elite, Ivy-ish brush, even though that’s not true about most of them at all,” Renn said. “Does anybody really care that a school of 2,700 students does anything? No, but you can … stir it up in the imagination of the public.”

She also noted that women’s colleges tend to enroll high percentages of international students, because some parents prefer to send students abroad to same-sex institutions, so Trump’s immigration policies could wreak havoc on women’s colleges’ enrollments.

For multiple reasons, “these are institutions in the crosshairs,” she said.

Hinton, of Hollins University, believes women’s colleges will persevere.

“What gives many women’s colleges a sense of strength is that we’re very clear about what our missions are,” she said, “and our missions have been threatened time and time again … We’ve been through civil wars. We’ve been through the integration of higher education. We’ve been through World Wars and two pandemics. And women’s colleges have stood strong through that. And I believe we will continue to stand strong through this moment.”