Education: Women's Education

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Women's Education

Before 1878 the secondary education of female students was largely undertaken by private tutors or in feepaying schools that usually reflected the religious and class backgrounds of students. Provision of postprimary education for working-class girls was virtually nonexistent. The first attempts to improve women's higher education were made by bourgeois Protestant campaigners who established a number of women's colleges, including the Ladies' Collegiate School (later Victoria College) in 1859, the Queen's Institute in 1861, and Alexandra College in 1866. In 1882 they founded the Central Association of Schoolmistresses and Other Ladies Interested in Education to lobby for the extension of women's access to higher education. Middle-class Catholic women were mostly taught by nuns, especially the Ursuline and Loreto orders which brought a strong French tradition to Irish Catholic schools—particularly boarding schools—by emphasizing literary subjects, refinement, order, and discipline.

Women's access to higher education was revolutionized by the introduction of intermediate education in 1878. This system of secondary education was open to all Irish students, male and female, and was administered by the Intermediate Education Board, which examined students annually and paid fees to the schools that produced the highest-scoring students in junior, middle, and senior grade examinations. A number of girls' secondary colleges entered their students for these examinations, and although fewer women than men presented themselves for examinations, by the turn of the twentieth century women were outperforming men in almost all subjects.

The establishment of several women's colleges in the 1880s and 1890s that aimed to prepare women for intermediate examinations raised the standard of women's education enormously. Many of these colleges were adapted to prepare women for entrance to the Royal University, which was established in 1879. Based on the University of London, this university was an examining body only, whose annual examinations, prizes, and scholarships were available to male and female students. It allocated a number of fellowships to teachers at approved institutions, but the preparation of students was left almost entirely to individual schools and private tutors. Since women's colleges received none of the Royal University's fellowships, inadequate teaching in classical languages and mathematics made the task of penetrating such traditionally male subjects as medicine and philosophy nearly impossible. Despite this, Protestant schools once again took the lead with several colleges, including Alexandra College, establishing departments that prepared women for Royal University examinations. Fearful that ambitious Catholic women would go to Protestant schools, Catholic schools followed suit by similarly introducing university classes for women. This began in 1883 with the Dominican convent school in Eccles Street, Dublin. Its women's university classes were taken over in 1893 by Saint Mary's University College, Dublin, which was soon joined by Loreto College, Saint Stephen's Green, and Saint Angela's in Cork. In addition, the old Queen's Colleges began gradually to admit women to classes that prepared them for Royal University examinations: Belfast in 1882, Cork in 1886, and Galway in 1888 (despite fierce opposition from the local Catholic bishop). The Cecilia Street Medical School—a remnant of the old Catholic University—admitted women in 1896. In total, fourteen educational institutions opened their doors to female students of the Royal University between 1879 and 1889.

Despite these improvements, teaching provisions at most women's colleges were so poor that many women were forced to resort to expensive private tuition in order to pass their examinations. Very fortunate women's colleges occasionally managed to engage a Royal University fellow for an hour or two, but the vast majority of female students had no contact with fellows, which were the only teaching provisions offered by the Royal University. The absolute refusal by University College, Dublin, to allow women to attend the lectures given by university fellows—of which University College, Dublin, was usually awarded half—placed women at a severe disadvantage.

By 1902 Catholic and Protestant women together formed the Irish Association of Women Graduates and Candidate Graduates, which presented evidence about the position of women in higher education to the Royal Commission on University Education in Ireland in 1902. The majority of the association's members were graduates of the Royal University, but others had studied at medical schools and other tertiary institutions. University College, Dublin, became the focus of a prolonged feminist campaign. Women were determined to gain admission to it as it was the only institution in Dublin that boasted any sort of collegiate life. Some sympathetic Royal University senators took up the women's cause and offered the use of university rooms to University College fellows who agreed to repeat their lectures to women. This unsatisfactory arrangement lasted only a few years because many fellows refused to repeat lectures, and others charged fees well beyond the means of women students. Finally in 1901, under enormous pressure, college authorities were forced to admit women to lectures in University College. Only second- and third-year arts students, mainly drawn from Catholic colleges, were allowed into lecture halls. First-year students were excluded and women were still barred from becoming full members of the college community. All these restrictions were lifted in 1908 with the establishment of the National University of Ireland. University College, Dublin, and the Queen's Colleges in Cork and Galway became constituent colleges of the new university, while the Belfast Queen's College became Queen's University. Women were awarded full equality in these institutions in the areas of teaching, degrees, and staff appointments.

Every university in the United Kingdom with the exception of Durham had admitted women (without giving them degrees) by 1892, and even Oxford and Cambridge had allowed women to attend lectures and to be placed on examination lists. Female activists reminded the authorities that the Irish universities and university colleges lagged behind the rest of the United Kingdom. Beginning in the 1880s, Trinity College was inundated by petitions and memorials from advocates of women's education. Although some university fellows supported women's demands, the university board made only meager concessions, such as the decision in 1896 to allow women only very limited access to certain examinations, but not to teaching facilities. Under considerable pressure from campaigners, Trinity College finally admitted women in 1904.

Although the degrees of all Irish universities were open to women by 1908, objections to mixed-sex education remained. Alexandra College supported the admission of women to the degrees of Trinity College but argued that their education should be arranged separately from men's. Alexandra's college department sought affiliation with Trinity College, but its bid was unsuccessful. The first women who attended Trinity College did so under highly restrictive conditions, but the provision of a lady registrar, a women's hostel, and the growth of social activities for women ensured that their active involvement in university life increased year by year. Victoria College made a similar application for affiliation to the Queen's University in Belfast, but that too was turned down and women were integrated into the new university alongside men. The education of nuns presented another problem, as the Catholic authorities were reluctant to allow them to mix freely with male students in the colleges of the National University. Several Catholic women's colleges applied for affiliation with the National University, but their bids were unsuccessful, and nuns began to attend college lectures on a regular basis beginning in the mid-1920s. Although fewer women than men completed secondary school and entered university for much of the first half of the twentieth century, this pattern was largely reversed by the 1980s. Female participation and performance statistics in secondary education are now equal to or better than male rates, and women make up just over half of all undergraduate and postgraduate students in Irish universities. In addition, women's participation in the traditionally male fields of medicine, law, and accountancy have now reached or exceeded 50 percent.