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Essay on right to women education
Education in Victorian Britain
Education in Victorian Britain
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Introduction:
Although higher education has been available in the United Kingdom for a long time, women were not as privileged as men to be educated equally. Brown (2011C) finds that 70% of men were educated compared to only 55% of women in 1851. These days, the situation seems to be inconsistent with the past as there are 10% more women entering into universities than men in 2010-2011. Moreover, there seems to be almost twice as many female students than male students. (Ratcliffe,2013). This essay aims to give a timeline of the key events that led to the equality of women in higher education as well as when degrees were awarded to women on Oxford and Cambridge.
History and statistics
According to the research shown by Brown (2011C), the population of women was rising gradually from 1036 per 1000 males in 1821 to 1054 per 1000 males in 1871. This meant that there would be unmarried women who would have to support themselves. Women had very limited career choices and most of them relied on being governesses to earn a living. Gillard (2011) notes that children received similar education to boys prior to the introduction of the 1870 Education Act which stressed a curriculum where girls should be taught domestic skills. Education for women in the beginning of the Victorian era was inadequate and inconsistent as girls were taught by private governesses who were untrained. (Gillard,2011)
The beginning of the movement
Jones (2012) mentioned that the Ladies of Langham Place Group believed that education for the middle-class woman was a hardship as they were taught by untrained governesses. The Langham Place Group consisted of Emily Davies, Elizabeth Garrett and Millicent Garrett and other women. This group analysed vari...
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...s important. To work within the word limit, I had to also pick events that I felt were important. I had to narrow down the events that I wanted to include in my essay and the significant people that helped make the change. I was also unable to discuss the other universities that restricted the admission of women.
In conclusion, equality for higher education for women did not come quick and easy. It was the hard work of many women. It also involved a change of mindset in people. Women had their degrees recognised by Cambridge in 1948, after over a hundred years since the movement began in 1843. As seen in the research conducted in this essay, people in the past were prejudiced against women attaining higher education. Oxford and Cambridge being the top universities in the country failed to see the importance of educating women and men equally until the mid 1900s.
As mentioned above, women’s role were unjust to the roles and freedoms of the men, so an advanced education for women was a strongly debated subject at the beginning of the nineteenth century (McElligott 1). The thought of a higher chance of education for women was looked down upon, in the early decades of the nineteenth century (The American Pageant 327). It was established that a women’s role took part inside the household. “Training in needlecraft seemed more important than training in algebra” (327). Tending to a family and household chores brought out the opinion that education was not necessary for women (McElligott 1). Men were more physically and mentally intellectual than women so it was their duty to be the educated ones and the ones with the more important roles. Women were not allowed to go any further than grammar school in the early part of the 1800’s (Westward Expansion 1). If they wanted to further their education beyond grammar, it had to be done on their own time because women were said to be weak minded, academically challenged and could n...
Education did not form part of the life of women before the Revolutionary War and therefore, considered irrelevant. Women’s education did not extend beyond that of what they learned from their mothers growing up. This was especially true for underprivileged women who had only acquired skills pertaining to domesticity unlike elite white women during that time that in addition to having acquired domestic skills they learned to read a result becoming literate. However, once the Revolutionary War ended women as well as men recognized the great need for women to obtain a greater education. Nonetheless, their views in regards to this subject differed greatly in that while some women including men believed the sole purpose of educating women was in order to better fulfil their roles and duties as wives and mothers others believed the purpose of education for women was for them “to move beyond the household field.” The essays of Benjamin Rush and Judith Sargent Murray provide two different points of view with respects to the necessity for women to be well educated in post-revolutionary America.
...by Skemp, the greatest change in women's rights at the time was education opportunities for young women. McMahon also felt that motherhood was the greatest setback for women's rights. For each piece literature, the questions of “what caused the greatest change?” and “what was the major setback?” were the two most important points addressed.
Imagine living in a time when your only role is to get married, bear children, and take care of your house and husband. Adrienne Rich proposes an ulterior idea in her essay “Taking Women Students Seriously” Women should not only question the gender standards but discuss the gender norms that society has created; by discussion and attention to the matter we can eliminate it all together. Women are not represented in school curriculums enough and have a large misrepresentation in society. Rich draws attention to: What women have working against them in education, how women are perceived in the world by the media and advertising, and the gender roles that society pressures young children to contort to. By striking up a discussion
Peterson, M. Jeanne. "The Victorian Governess: Status Incongruence in Family and Society." Suffer and Be Still: Women in the Victorian Age. Ed. Martha Vicinus. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973.
The oppression and discrimination the women felt in this era launched the women into create the women’s right movement. The economic growth in the market economy women opportunity to work was very low Lucy Stone explained that the same society that pushes men forward keeps woman at home (Doc. H). Only low paying jobs were available such as factories, seamstress, or a teacher and in most states women had no control over their wages. Charlotte Woodward explained how she would sew gloves for a terrible wage but it was under rebellion she wished to choose her own job and the pay (Doc.E). The chart on Doc F explained how women between 1837-1844 dominated men as teachers in the Massachusetts Public School. The idea of the “cult of true womanhood” was that most respectable middle class women should stay at home and take care of the family and be the moral of the home. The advancement in the market economy gave women a chance to make their own money to be able to support themselves and work outside of the home. The nineteenth century was a ferment of reform such as the Second...
Education for women in the 1800s was far different from what we know today. During her life, a girl was taught more necessary skills around the home than the information out of school books. A woman’s formal education was limited because her job opportunities were limited—and vice versa. Society could not conceive of a woman entering a profession such as medicine or the law and therefore did not offer her the chance to do so. It was much more important to be considered 'accomplished' than thoroughly educated. Elizabeth Bennet indicated to her sisters that she would continue to learn through reading, describing education for herself as being unstructured but accessible. If a woman desired to further he education past what her classes would teach her, she would have to do so independently, and that is what most women did.
In early American history, society believed that women did not have a place in education and high-level learning. They were told not to bother their brains with such advanced thinking. Middle and upper class women learned to read and write, but their education ended there. A woman’s place was said to be in the home, cooking, sewing, and taking care of the children. In the case of upper class women, their “to-do” list was cut even shorter with the servants present to do the work.
Education was sex segregated for hundreds of years. Men and women went to different schools or were physically and academically separated into “coeducational” schools. Males and females had separate classrooms, separate entrances, separate academic subjects, and separate expectations. Women were only taught the social graces and morals, and teaching women academic subjects was considered a waste of time.
Education is the most important in the critical rank for reducing gender inequalities. Women’s status socioeconomically has increased with the time change, but only because they have more means of entry to improved circumstances. Forms of gender inequality still exist in our society, even in the highly developed world. Sex-segregation
A woman’s role in history was to cook, clean and raise children. What was to happen when women took a more prominent role in society, or when she wanted to go to college? Would they be treated as equals or have a lesser value? Virginia Woolf writes about her two meals at two different universities, one being a men’s university and the other a women’s university. Her writing includes what one meal had and the other lacked. Both her meals at these universities would prove her point that a woman was treated with lesser value than that of a man.
Initially, in more conservative countries, girls and women were discriminated against some “tough” courses which were considered masculine. Recently, thanks to the awareness the globalization has created to the world, we find women exceling in these courses and getting employment. Equal chance of schools is also being provided to both genders. Girls are no longer looked at as liability in the families. They are encouraged to go to school and be independent in their lives. ICT has enabled e-learning that allows people to further their studies while still working. These allow promotions at work. It also means that women can still further their studies even after getting involved with family issues. Computers and other electronic gadgets have become affordable, hence allowing people to study from which ever corner of the world, and also get informed from wherever they are,( neca, 2014).
Education has been the hurdle keeping women from gaining equality in society, by separating them from their male counterparts. Women who sought higher education were considered, heathens and the most disgusting beings that would perish. Without education to empower them, women were stripped of their dignity and rights by their husbands and other men of the community. The struggle for women higher education is a battle that still has not reached its citadel.
It is implied that since the dawn of time, women have been inferior to thy fellow man. It was not until the Age of Enlightenment, which began around 1650 in Europe, that the first ideas of women being as competent as men, lacking only education and not intelligence, began to circulate (Online MBA). As the end of the 18th Century neared, women were regulars in salons and academic debates, though schooling for women would come late down the road (Online MBA). Prior to the birth of the Industrial Revolution, women did not work. Those who did work were from lower class families and many of those were minorities. It was the primary idea that a women’s role was of that at the home; cooking sewing, cleaning, and caring for the children. There were many duties required of them around the house and their focus was to be the supportive wife who dutifully waited for the husband to come home after a long day at work.
Women have had quite a few hurdles to get over since the 1950's. In 1958 the proportion of women attending college in comparison with men was 35 percent. (Friedan,