HaKatan > Rabbi Dr. Soloveichik gave a public talmud class to women in Stern College for Women.
> MO schools have batei midrash where girls learn random gemaras. That is all wrong. Period.
I understand that he did this opening class (pictures exist) exactly in order to make it clear that it is not wrong. As he is a Talmid Chochom, who was recognized by others as such – even those who disagreed, you need to at least pay attention to his arguments, as much as you do to other gedolim you are quoting. And as much as it was controversial then, I don’t think it is burning so much. From what I hear, only small number of Stern girls attend classes that are pure Gemora (as it should be) and those might be mostly wrongly motivated by feminism. At the same time, their regular classes refer to Gemora occasionally in addition to Rambam, Sh’A, poskim, and this is also as it should be.
I would note that when I mention some selected Gemoras (mostly related to mussar, agoda, or practical halocha, I am not doing pilpul with them) to BY students in my house, they often heard it at BY (without word Gemora mentioned). If they did not hear that, they are eager to discuss also – as long as I don’t call it a gemorah class and then they run away :). The most productive are the gemorahs that are either missing or opposite to what they are taught at BY, such as obligations to work, work ethics. I think with time they accepted that we pasken by Gemorah over BY printouts. So, in this case, Gemora is useful to keep girls’ education from going away too far into factional abyss.