"The root of knowledge is bitter, but its fruits are sweet"
A historical perspective on women and education.

Contents

The significance of education for women | What was the problem? | Education as a strategy for women | Important dates in the history of women’s education | Two interpretations of developments | The emergence of girls’ schools and teachers’ training colleges | Women at the universities – a history of opposition | Historical research on women at the universities | A final word | List of literature |

The significance of education for women

In the past, there have always been a few well-educated women from the upper classes who have acquired theoretical knowledge privately and therefore been able to have a public role in society. As early as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, aristocratic women in particular have been able to exercise a degree of power behind the scenes, in politics as well as in the private power games between families. However, not even these wealthy ladies had access to the official channels of power in the same way as men did.

During the nineteenth century a significant turning-point occurred. The new thing that happened was that the number of women who turned towards the public sphere increased radically; women who read, spoke, wrote and used language as a tool to raise themselves above their earlier subordi-nation. A distinguishing factor for them all was that they had been given theoretical education in one form or other, either in private girls’ schools or at home through their parents or private tutors. These pioneers made contributions to philanthropy, medical care, journalism, franchise, authorship and social movements. They founded schools, hospitals and all kinds of other institutions. To have received formal education marked their status. An educated person was often regarded by the lead-ing levels in society as politically mature and morally elevated.

A comprehensive system of associations was built up to strengthen the cohesion between women, and to demonstrate the seriousness behind their demands. These pioneer women started magazines, reading salons, courses and networks, and they opened institutions of learning. The early feminists were often recruited from middle-class environments – from families that had the resources to send their daughters to private tuition or private girls’ schools or else to employ governesses.

The relatively great female element in the modernisation process of the nineteenth century was a historically new phenomenon, and the background to it was, amongst other things, the development of the educational system. That women began to be given formal education in regular school institu-tions was of fundamental importance for the development of women’s issues. However, other insti-tutional transformations too played a part. A number of patriarchal laws disappeared in the middle of the nineteenth century and this gave women amongst other things the right of inheritance, juridi-cal majority, the freedom of trade and certain rights to work to support themselves. These all rein-forced women’s civic rights. Women were now able to sign contracts, participate in agreements, borrow money and found institutions. This made many women more independent. They no longer had to be economically and socially dependent on fathers, brothers or husbands.

Thus the emancipation of women, citizenship, modernisation and education all went hand in hand during the nineteenth century, and extensive research has highlighted women’s own efforts to par-ticipate in these processes. There was namely no simple and obvious route to higher education and roles in the public sphere for women until late in the twentieth century. The representatives of the State were not interested in weighing down the finances of the realm with all too heavy costs for women’s education. A handful of teachers’ training colleges for the schoolmis-tresses in the state schools and a higher training college for the schoolmistresses at the private girls’ schools were considered to be sufficient. The rest was to be taken care of privately or by parents, foundations or county councils. The education of girls was the responsibility of the family, not the State, as was established in various reports. This lack of interest on the part of the State concerning the education of women resulted in a perpetual battle over higher education between men and women. Educational issues were also continual hubs of conflict for various reasons during the nine-teenth century, and not only when it came to matters concerning the education of girls.

What was the problem?

How should a modern system of education be constructed exactly, so that it reflected the existing structure of society in the best possible way, while at the same time new groups and categories in society had their educational needs fulfilled?

This difficult dilemma developed into a long-drawn-out battle. Conflicts arose concerning principles that crossed each other, on the one hand the demands of modernity for the equal treatment of everyone and the inclusion of everyone in the emerging national state, and on the other hand the demands of the traditional gender hierarchy for maintaining the differences between the sexes. How could women be included in modern society and still keep their position in the subordination de-creed by nature? This issue was discussed during the entire nineteenth century and far on into the twentieth. Girls must be educated so that their femininity was nurtured. If they landed up in mascu-line fields they became threatening and could not be controlled. Girls’ education should symbolise the contrast to the masculine by always emphasising gender differences. The debate circled around these differences between feminine and masculine and the widely different identities of the two sexes.

The system that was slowly built up in the nineteenth century became organised along the lines of class and gender. Practical, essential basic knowledge like being able to read, write and count could be taken care of for the great majority of people, which is to say the children of peasants and la-bourers, in the government elementary schools that were a combined school for both boys and girls. However, the theoretical knowledge that was produced at the institutions for higher education like grammar schools and colleges was a kind of knowledge for the ruling classes-to-be, first and fore-most. Girls did not fit in there. Only men from the upper classes of society were expected to take charge of the top jobs in the new society, not women. That was why the grammar schools were reserved for young men, and in most of the larger towns, grammar schools for boys were built in the nineteenth century. However, women were nonetheless drawn into the competition about schooling in various ways. Many put the question to themselves: Why should men have a monopoly of theo-retical education leading to university? Were women not also citizens in the nation and useful to the state? Should women not also be given access to higher education? That is where the private girls’ schools come into the picture.

We find a longing in the women who took the lead for better social conditions and higher education, for women to be allowed to be where important things were happening. They often belonged to an elite group that had been given cultural and political tools through the environment they grew up in and their education. With education came social status, a language, a lifestyle and friends in various networks of intellectuals. Their theoretical knowledge gave them a platform from which to speak, an inner confidence and strength. With their educational merits and social background, they could make claims of interpreting and leading other women. Education provided a lifestyle, a critical culture, that suited the modernity project. They were able to discuss, systematise and argue. They knew how to use scientific methods in the discourse and to prove that men’s figures and statistics were not true, when men attempted to dribble them off the field using statistics. They grew assured and dared to challenge men’s power.

The leading women in the women’s movement agitated, held speeches, travelled, played theatre, wrote articles and books, constructed networks, wrote pamphlets and minutes, held mass meetings and made collections of names. Education opened up possibilities that did not seem to have any limits. Formal knowledge gave power resources and it was almost a duty to stand at the head of other women when one had received an education. What relationship did this emancipation process really bear to the emergence of the education system? Which factors were driving forces in that development?

Important dates in the history of women’s education

In the following sketch of the background, I shall make a few stops in the development towards more equality in the conditions of education for women and men. There are five important dates in the history of women’s education. These are:

•  The institution of government elementary schools in 1842, where both boys and girls were given access to basic levels of education
•  The development of teachers’ training colleges for schoolmistresses and the growth of private girls’ schools during the period 1860-1900
•  The opening of the universities for women in 1873
•  The opening of the grammar schools for girls in 1927 (certain secondary schools and municipal secondary schools accepted girl pupils from 1905)
•  The institution of the nine-year compulsory school and the new upper sec-ondary school in the 1960s

These reforms have contributed to the gigantic process of feminisation that the education sy-stem has undergone: the number of women to pass through the higher levels of education has increased drastically. We know that girls nowadays achieve better results than boys during their compulsory schooling. They are pulling ahead in various ways. They get better grades, they can read better and they are more harmonious. The majority (about 60%) of all those who are studying for a bachelor’s degree at university today are women, and half of those who start out on post-graduate studies are women. More women students than men students gain their degrees. How are we to interpret this?

Two interpretations of developments

These developments may be interpreted as a success story in which women have more and more gained power over knowledge. In a current report from the Swedish National Agency for Higher Education (Högskoleverket), we can follow the statistics showing how women students are in majority on most courses and programmes at universities. Almost as many women gain their doctorates as men nowadays. Women have at last begun to enjoy the ”sweet fruits” that rhetoric about higher education promised at the previous turn of the century. Women invest in higher education and the future probably belongs to them.

Unfortunately, this version of the story is only partially true. The history of women’s education is on the contrary a rather dark and tragic narrative about opposition, obstacles, setbacks and perpetual disappointments, especially within the system of higher education teaching. The root of knowledge is undeniably bitter and the fruits not always that sweet. The higher up in the "system" we look, the greater is the unequality between the sexes today. Even if the rights of the sexes are formally democratic, the opportunities of exercising them are different in practice when it comes to higher posts, administrative positions and research resources. Research shows how women in the academy are subjected to hidden discrimination, a systematic negative discrimination on account of their gender. Male academics receive higher salaries and are awarded a greater proportion of the research grants and allocations available. Men still make up the great majority in research councils and scientific academies. The subjects and courses that lead to high status and extensive resources in professional life (technology and natural sciences) are still mainly populated by men, whereas women are to be found in low-salary courses and programmes like healthcare, schools and welfare. Within the education system, there is still an incomplete democracy in which women are subordinate. Women’s cultural capital is not valued as highly as men’s.

There are thus two ”truths” at one and the same time about men, women and higher education – one process that points forwards and upwards for women and another that is stuck in a groove. But how was it possible for the obstacles in the way of women’s education to be removed in the past? What can we learn from the pioneers who started the resistance move-ment in the nineteenth century and who demanded education for women? Which structures of possibility existed that they were able to exploit? How did they challenge men’s power hierarchies and privileges within the world of education?

In response to the demand for educated women in the labour force, a comprehensive private school system for girls began to take form during the second half of the nineteenth century. The ”market” was obliged to offer what the state did not. A number of girls’ schools became nurseries for spreading ideas about women’s politics. The teachers at the girls’schools and the pupils constituted a kind of ”critical mass” in which new ideas about women’s conditions and subordination germinated into awareness and dissatisfaction. Many schoolmistresses at girls’ schools became activists in the suffrage movement and other social move-ments. As entrepreneurs and professionals they also became role models for young women who dreamed about independence and other types of career than those offered by the marriage market.

Why did women suddenly become so attractive on the labour market in the nineteenth century? It had to do with economy, bureaucracy, demography and ideology. Employers were able to benefit from economic advantages by engaging cheap female labour in schools, hos-pitals, offices and in the new postal and telegraph services. Bureaucratic reforms in the various state departments and in commerce and industry created a number of routine jobs that women were considered to manage as well as men. To become a schoolmistress, nurse, postal clerk or office clerk was also partly a solution to the demographic problems that had arisen on account of the diminishing frequency of marriage. Middle-class women in particular risked remaining unmarried all their lives thus becoming a burden to their fathers and brothers if they were not provided with their own means of support. Ideological arguments were also constructed to prove that women were suitable. Employers were of the opinion that the middle-class virtues attributed especially to women – conscientiousness, diligence, cleanli-ness, morality and patience – were valuable assets in many professions. The women who had been given a middle-class upbringing were considered to be a suitable type of employee in certain sectors. This is how headmaster Per Adam Siljeström expressed his eagerness to employ women teachers in the government elementary schools:

"In addition, it is undeniable that woman possesses on the whole a great preeminence in everything that can be recognised as conscientiousness and punctuality, patience and perseverance, calm and orderliness, polish and delicate manners, and on account of all these characteristics she is preeminently skilled in creating a spirit and maintaining an order, such as each and every person must wish to see prevail in a school. It is the spirit of home, that through woman, the most noble representative of the home and home-life, has influence throughout the school. Everything finally boils down to this, that a comparatively equally quali-fied, nay, even better qualified woman teacher may be obtained for a much lower fee than a man. If this path were to stand open, it is certain that a large number of poor women of better upbringing would choose the call of a teacher."

However, the most important advance was nevertheless the extensive establishment of girls’ schools. A great number of girls’ schools were built on private initiative all over the country. By 1870 there were over a hundred private girls’ schools in Sweden, many established and organised by women. This was a development that nobody had really reckoned with. The whole thing resembled a cultural revolution directed by women themselves, but also by male initiatives and by politicians in towns and municipalities. In Ingela Schånberg’s book on girls’ schools "De dubbla budskapen" (”The contradictory messages”) we are given a detailed picture of how this process of establishment was carried out.

For the girls’schools ideologists, flexibility was their watchword, and the girls’ schools tradition was the bearer of an ideology of freedom in which individuality, creativity and reform pedagogy were given the positions of honour. Since teaching was not a state concern, it was not regulated by state decrees either, and could therefore enjoy greater freedom with regard to curriculum and methods of discipline. The authority of the schoolmistresses was founded on a personal contract between the parents and the school. In the culture of girls’ schools, a kind of middle-class matriarchy of a special type was the ruling structure. Some contemporary views from the Åhlin Girls’ School in Stockholm can provide certain signals concerning the atmosphere:

”The Åhlin sisters wore their hair up over the middle of their heads and combed smoothly over their ears, with a basket of plaits at the neck. They were dressed in either black or dark grey, plain dresses that covered their arms, with collars in the same material. On their feet they wore cloth boots, which meant that they could walk around so quietly that they could not be heard./---/ Aunt Carin was unbelievably awe-inspiring and supervised the entire es-tablishment. We loved Aunt Julia /---/ Aunt Mina was extremely idiosyncratic, but she had humour, and she was kind.”

If violence and punishments were part of the pedagogy in the boys’ grammar schools, then appealing to the girls’ consciences, empathy and solidarity with the teachers were instead the methods used in the pedagogy of the girls’ schools. Both systems demonstrated different sides of the middle-class upbringing: the grammar school boy was to become the ruler of the future and should therefore be made to experience the hard school of life through training in various power hierarchies. The girls’ school girl was to become a middle-class housewife or a female clerk with the ability to work in professions in which social relations and a pleasant lifestyle were paramount. The different school forms prepared the young people for different roles in the future.

The syllabi were also adapted to a traditional way of thinking about femininity and masculinity. Where boys read grammar and techniques of disposition in their lessons in their mother tongue, girls learned feeling, fantasy, sagas, the history of literature and elocution. When the boys studied chemical formulas and the systemisation of plants and animals, girls were taught a practical application of something that was called everyday chemistry and physics for the household. Everything was divided up according to fixed thought patterns about the differences between the sexes and the importance of keeping the sexes apart. Everything had its correct place. Men had the higher-ranking jobs, women the lower.

In 1927 there was a new school reform that made it possible for girls to attend the same type of grammar school as boys. More and more girls moved over to these new secondary schools, but even so, many of the girls’ schools continued to exist, especially in the larger towns and cities. In 1962, in connection with the institution of the nineyear compulsory school system, the state decided that the girls’ schools should be closed. The foundation was now laid for a new school system in which the basic idea was that class differences between the pupils were to be minimised. However, it was gender differences that became less marked instead, when it came to achievements and examination results. The compulsory school and the new upper secondary school became the girls’ new possibility for showing that girls’ intellectual capacity was no different from boys’. The gender structure has also changed radically in the theoretical programmes, while the vocational programmes are still strictly divided according to sex.

The first generation of women students came from wealthy homes and the tradition of studying was important in their families. The support of the family was essential for a woman to be able to start reading at Uppsala or Lund – the two universities that were rich in traditions. Almost half of the women took their degrees. In 1914, about 435 women in Sweden had acquired a degree. Most of them were enrolled at the Faculty of Arts, even if a surprising number also read medicine and natural science. Very few read law and theology. The first women to do so often felt awkward and isolated, not surprisingly. Men had of course a lead of 800 years, and many men saw women’s presence at these old institutions of learning as a sign of the decadence of the culture. That type of statement could affect a woman’s self-perception, and a number of women became excessively self-critical, as in the following case when Ingeborg Wikander is complaining to a friend in a letter:

”I am not good enough for Uppsala. I should have understood that before. I always suspected that this was the case, but not strongly enough to refrain from a foolish attempt. A person with no energy, no ability to read independently, no perseverance, no willpower, what business has such a person to be in Uppsala?"

These women were young, and it was the first time they had lived beyond the immediate control of their families, but the more of them there were, the more normalised their lives became. Both sexes got used to each other, and freer forms of social intercourse developed in their leisure time and in their daily life. Studies took up a great part of their time and created shared interests in knowledge. Women started living where men were living, they shared the cooking with men and contacts, friendships and love relationships developed.

It was in the institutional contexts that opposition was the toughest. In parliamentary debates, in the senates, in the student associations, in the life of the student union, in the student magazines and in certain male societies, the view on women was still disparaging. The problems got worse when women became more numerous and when they started to gain their degrees and also to demand that they should be able to use their degrees with the aim of making careers as higher clerical workers, public servants and professionals.

Men’s working territory and the state job market were now threatened, and the antagonism between the sexes became more and more serious. Women were slowed down by a paragraph in the constitution that stated that only ”Swedish men” were eligible for the offices in the state. This made the academic women organise themselves in order to try to change those principles, and beginning in 1904, when the Association of Academically Educated Wo-men (Akademiskt bildade kvinnors förening) was formed, a twenty year long struggle was initiated for recognition of women’s eligibility for posts in the state. The law on eligibility was passed in 1924, but there were still several professions that were considered unsuitable for women: professions in the church, armed forces, diplomatic corps, customs and excise, gymnastics teaching in boys’ grammar schools, etc. But what was really wrong with women? Which arguments were employed?

There was a large group of men at the universities and in the government (and in society at large) who were strongly critical to academic studies for women right from the start. Some of them used religion as a weapon to support their contentions that it was unsuitable for women to study at university. Learned women were not in accordance with God’s will and the order of Creation. Woman’s assignment was in the home and family. Other debaters held out science as evidence that women’s bodies were too weak for studies. Their ovaries would atrophy and they would not be able to cope with all their learning. Women’s brains were not as developed as men’s. A highly-educated woman was against nature and her presence in the academy might also damage morale. It was dangerous to let the sexes mix at a sensitive age, since the innate identities of the sexes were threatened. Doctor Säwe says for example in Parliament as early as 1864:

”I would not wish to see women studying together with men for example in an anatomy lesson, for it could not be but a mistake, since such things could not do other than damage the modesty and hurt the sense of decency which is so intense in woman.”

Another member of parliament says: ”One may assume that it is impossible to imagine that young men and women should study together without trespassing on the moral development of society.”

When one follows the argumentation against women academics during a prolonged period of time, it is possible to perceive certain patterns in this opposition. The interesting thing is that the character of the arguments changes during the passing of the decades. Opponents could not use the same kinds of evidence year in and year out if they wished to remain credible. In the nineteenth century, it was most often the religious and moral arguments that dominated the discourse. At the turn of the century (1900) came the evidence for women’s fragility and weak biology, and in the 1920s it was asserted that women did not have sufficient authority and discipline to cope with higher studies and high positions in the state. The attempts to disparage women’s ability continued for a long time. In connection with the discussion on sexual equality in the 1970s, the open opposition was toned down. However, despite the fact that it is now 135 years since women made their entry into the universities, there is still a glass ceiling and great difficulties confronting women in their academic careers. Research has shown how comprehensive this discrimination is, and how subtly it works.

How can we explain all of this? Why is there all this opposition against women who only wish to avail themselves of their civic rights? Are there gender structures that were laid down in the academic system over one hundred years ago, that are still haunting us today? We may quote Sven Eric Liedman, a historian of ideas, who thinks that the university is imbued with a ”frozen ideology”.

Historical research on women at the universities

The academic cultural sphere has been analysed from a gender perspective in several historical theses during recent years. Tord Rönnholm has written about the women pioneers at the universities, those who were the first to breach the gender barriers. In his thesis ”Kunskapens kvinnor” (appr. "Women of knowledge") he analyses the culture collisions between feminine and masculine that confronted the first women within the academy. The pioneer generation was cross-border in many ways, and challenged the male power monopoly. The response to this opposition, on the part of the women, was to create ”their own space”, their own ceremonial rituals, cooking teams, reading traditions and organisations. And their psychological rescue was that they could see the difference between men as individuals and men as a group. With time, a certain habituation developed within the system – mixed-sex arenas appeared in which meetings between men and women made student life easier and minimised the frictions.

Those women who continued on to take their doctorates are described by Hanna Markusson Winkvist in her book ”Som isolerade öar” (appr. "As isolated islands"). If the first women students had been confronted with difficulties, this was nothing compared to what the first women post-graduates had to put up with. One hundred and four women gained their doctorates in Sweden between 1870 and 1949, and of them, only one became a professor. These highly educated women landed up in some strange kind of inbetween position. As women with doctorates, they were not regarded as real women, but they did not possess the characteristics of a man either. Markusson follows in the tracks of the 104 women and maps out their social background, their networks and how they ended up. It is a sad story, how these laurel-wreathed women tried to make their way forward as researchers in different ways in their unsuccessful attempts to achieve posts at the universities. Instead they had to apply to the school world, folklore institutions, adult education and journalism in order to find jobs. The final section of the thesis deals with the image of the woman academic – a deviant, an anomaly, a remote island, gifted but ugly. Her sexual identity was questioned and she was viewed as sexually neuter, and she was compelled to relate to this image in various ways. If she was different anyway, then she could more easily take the step outside what was normal, which gave her a certain liberty in the formation of her own identity.

Women students were either silly geese or old maids, objects, mediocrities, emotional people or spiritual potatosacks. State reports have also established that men had a greater scientific aggressivity and were better suited to academic studies. There was no doubt that the universities were men’s arenas and power bases. However, even during this period, oppositional discourses were formulated by women politicians and by the women students themselves, political discussions that led to questions being asked, with a critical feminist discussion to follow.

A final word

In all probability, it is the dependence on records of these institutions, structures and discourses by which the universities are still weighed down, and which hamper an even distribution of knowledge, posts, and resources between men and women within the academy and higher education as a whole. Men do not want to let go of their power over scientific knowledge. However, history teaches us that if a structure is not breached it will generate similar problems in the future. This means that we can expect new opposition against the frozen ideology in the future. Scientific knowledge cannot be monopolised in an open society with democratic structures. This is women’s chance.

Something has happened at any rate, even if it will take another fifty years at the present rate of progress before the number of women professors equals the number of men.

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Stockholm, aug. 2009

Andra webbplatser

Alma Maters døtre. (Alma Mater’s Daughters). Articles and photographs of and by those women with academic educations who were employed by The Royal Fredrik University up until 1940. Alma Mater’s Daughters is included in the portal Kvinner i Norge gjennom 100 år. (Women in Norway during the past hundred years). ´