Hello. With many college principals and their views on degrees 1879 to 1920.
During the 41 years from the foundation of the five women's colleges, up to 1920,
just 10 women held the position of principle to being in per host for 29 and 30 years, respectively.
Their views on degrees for women were not uniform. For example, we can compare the approach of Elizabeth Wordsworth, Ella M.H. principal from 1879.
With that of Emily Penrose, third principal of Somerville.
Wordsworth famously remarked, If women did the work, that was the great thing.
Sooner or later, they would get the credit for it. Her comments are markedly different from those of Emily Penrhos, when, not if the degree comes,
the strongest argument will be the number of students qualified to receive it.
In fact, by 1914, Penrose was refusing to accept students unprepared to undertake work for a degree.
This contrast between Wordsworth and Penrhos,
the two future days was similar to the differing approaches in Cambridge of a class at Newnham and Emily Davis, a Gertten.
Who were these 10 principals? Elizabeth Wordsworth at them, H.
Madeline assured a fever at Somerville far hundred like H in 1879.
Annie Moberly at St. Hugh's 1886. Bertha Johnson at the Society of Home Students Later Suntans, founded in 1893.
And Esther Burrowes at St Hilda's, also created in 1893.
Best excesses were Henrietta, Jex, Blake and H.
Agnes Maitland and then Emily Penrose at Somerville.
Christine Burrows, St Hilda's and Eleanor Jordan, said Hughes.
Although Oxford women weren't granted degree ease until 1920, there had been useful steps along the way.
In 1880, for a statute admitted women to some university examinations,
the remainder including medicine and jurisprudence following suit over the next 10 years.
More significantly, in 1896, a petition was put to the university for Women's Admission to the B.A. degree.
A vocal minority of key individuals in the Association for the Higher Education of Women was strongly opposed.
And that their voice influenced congregation. The vote being lost by 215 to 140.
Some opponents even proposed setting up a women's university somewhere in England.
Yet, although the attempt to secure degrees failed in 1896, it was a powerful factor in maintaining a public profile.
And for 1989, when the forward thinking new chance to the Lord Curzon requested an early discussion on women's degrees,
the machinery was set in motion, which would end in success.
In 1920. Taking the principles overall, most supported degrees,
Elizabeth Wordsworth and Bertha Johnson standing out as initial reluctant adopters of the movement.
I'd like to focus first on Wordsworth and Johnson and then look at the principals who were in favour using Penrhos as the main player.
Wordsworth, great niece of the poet and daughter of the bishop of Lincoln,
had no formal education herself but benefited from a highly intellectual family background.
She was witty, bright and outspoken and came to LNH armed with an impressive address book.
Her aim was to guide students for their future lives in the context of a close knit family like Bates.
She didn't have a clear plan for a future college on an equal footing with men's.
Nor did she actively campaign for women's degrees. Her goal was education for enjoyment,
so women could better play that role in the existing order and participate in the intellectual pursuits of an educated home.
She wasn't interested in vocational education, wanting to turn out girls, as she said, so that they would be capable of making homes happy.
Her ideal woman was, again, I quote, better with four hands than with the head and Bestival with the heart.
In 1896 was worth Lennert towards the proposal for a diploma for women.
Not requiring study of Latin and Greek.
She had an aversion to controversy and on the much discussed subject of the degree, Wordsworth rather cleverly hedged her bet.
It's presenting an equivocal front.
Bertha Johnson, principal of the Society of Home Students, dedicated the 50 years of her working life to women's higher education in Oxford.
By 1915, most of the first generation of principals had retired.
But Johnson remained at St Ann's until 1921.
She was significantly more proactive on the subject of the degree than words worth declaring her opposition in 1895.
In a detailed and strong worded speech.
I confess, it is a great surprise to me to find myself amongst those who hang back when there seems to be a question of some new privilege for women.
Her argument was because women didn't have to study Greek and Latin obligatory components of a degree course.
Then why? For what? According to her, were erroneously called equal rights.
Should women have to follow men in studying classics involving substantial work, given most girls schools didn't teach Latin or Greek?
Johnson called the degree a red ribbon and a boot fit made to fit men.
This is our liberty and we have prised it, she continued, adding that the lack of a degree had never proved a hindrance for any woman she knew.
So Johnson was part of the vocal minority who opposed the granting of degrees.
Her husband, Arthur, fellow of all souls in total for public agreement, championing the cause was Emily Penrhos, Somerville principal from 1987.
Having previously been principal of both Bedford and then Royal Holloway College is in London with London already awarding degrees to women.
She was accustomed to seeing her students graduate.
Renowned for her quality of statesmanship, Penrose was an alumna of Somerville and had been professor of ancient history at Bedford College.
So she worked with Oxford Dons as academic equal.
Like her peers amongst the women principals, Penrhos typically exercised caution as a strategy advising her students in 1915 on their behaviour.
It rests with you either by a little thoughtlessness or carelessness or forgetfulness to do a grievous harm to Somerville or to make it your business.
But the fear of any critics shall be groundless. Her determination that some of your students should be prepared was vindicated when hers was the
college with the largest number qualified to receive degrees 300 being ready to graduate in 1920.
What led most of the principals to support the calls for call for degrees?
We can attribute this vision to two main strands. Changes in women's higher education and personal experience.
Since the mid eighteen hundreds. Development of women's higher education in the U.K. had been significant.
Following on from the Second Sisters in the US, which had grown up from 1837 onwards.
All over the country where ladies educational associations, organising lectures and preparing the way for women to study at university.
Formal institutions. Julian. Queens and Bedford colleges in London in the mid 19th.
Were followed by Westfield and Royal Holloway Colleges. And from 1880, all London women graduated.
By nineteen hundred most universities granted degrees to women Durran in 1895,
being the final university in England, apart from Oxford and Cambridge, to allow women to graduate.
Along with parallel campaigns for women on suffrage, neagle rights and paid work.
Widespread national progress in higher education was a driver for the Oxford campaign.
The second major factor is strengthening the principal's resolve was personal experience,
in contrast to the first five principals with minimal secondary and no tertiary education.
Three major principals, Christine Burrowes, Eleanor Jordan and Emily Penrhos had been students all at Oxford.
So they were campaigning for themselves as well as their students.
In fact, Eleanor Jordaan already had a degree, a doctorate from the University of Paris.
And Henry interjects Blake and Eleanor Jordan, formerly had mistresses, had witnessed substantial progress in girls secondary education.
As individuals, the principles were ambitious for their students and colleges and didn't like lagging behind other universities.
In marked contrast with Wordsworth worth Moberly, Exit Hughes ensured right from 1886 that her students take the full degree course.
An important impetus was the strong support, the principles enjoyed from the leading male academics since the early days of women's higher education.
Key Oxford academics were at the forefront Cheiron college councils hosting women principals to dinner and giving individual encouragement.
14TH of October, 1920, the day when degrees were finally granted to women, was a stellar occasion.
With the university no longer demanding that some in Greek birth, Johnson felt the time was ripe,
so she happily that the five women principals into the Sheldonian to receive their M.
A's. Though she refused to wear a white blouse, preferring to retain her customary high necked black woman.
Very, Britain recounts. When the Great South Doors opened,
the five women principals arrayed for the first time in caps and gowns entered with Mrs.
Johnson supported by her Ebony stick but proudly erect in her jue place at their head.
After a second silence, the theatre rang with unrehearsed applause and the vice chancellor rose to
receive the first women masters of Arts ever to appear in that historic place.
Words were eventually about the inevitable. But it's intriguing that no record has been found of her reaction to the granting of degrees.
The supreme irony of her initial indifference is highlighted in this 1928 picture taken after her award of an honorary doctorate of civil law.
She remarked with characteristic wit make making a scarlet woman of me at my age.
Mr. Vice Chancellor, on 24th October 1920.
She had also graciously received an honorary M.A. when all members of convocation rose to their feet.
A welcome never previously extended to any individual.
Unfortunately, just seven years after women were 52 degrees,
there was a backlash when a formidable sounding statute for the rotation of numbers was imposed, not removed for 32 years.
Despite much protest from women and their supporters, this limited women's students to one sixth of the numbers of men.
Eight hundred and forty.
It's sobering to read what the warden of Wadham, Joseph Wells, formerly Oxford vice chancellor, wrote just before the statute was passed.
It was never even suggested in 1896, in 1989 or in 1920 that the women's societies were to enjoy the unrestricted rights of men's colleges.
Oxford was to remain a man's university to the full membership of which some women were admitted.
I hope that congregation on Tuesday will affirm that this is still the principle on which we welcome students here.
In 1959, the statute was revoked.
The five colleges achieved full collegiate status. Those long 80 years since women's colleges began had seen impressive progress.
Intriguingly, in 1956,
Christine Burrows was asked if the eighteen seventies pioneers could ever have visualised the 1950s equality between men and women students.
She replied emphatically, Oh, no, they would not have approved of it in those days.
It would not have been thought right and proper.
We can only speculate on the reaction of our early principles, if they could have visualised that less than 100 years after the degree was granted.
Oxford would have its first female vice chancellor under 18 out of the 38 heads of House, a whisker away from 50 percent would be female.
We can fantasise that with an eye to progress, for the most part, what their reaction would have been, wholehearted approval,
and that they would have thought both developments borrowing the words of Christine Burrow's to be right and proper.
Thank you.