Women Students

Lise Meitner grew up in the Vienna of Emperor Franz-Josef and horsedrawn trolley cars. She was born there in 1878 into a well-to-do Jewish family and decided at an early age that she wanted to be a scientist like Madame Curie. (Later Albert Einstein would call her the German Madame Curie. ) In 1901, she entered the University of Vienna. There, where serious women students were considered odd, she was treated rudely by many of her fellow students. In 1905 she was only the second woman in the university s history to receive a Pli.D. in science. 

Lest the presence of women students in Armstrong s laboratory suggest that he was a supporter of women s professional careers, his views were clearly expressed in his BAAS presidential address in Winnipeg in 1909. 

Individual, except students and pregnant women Students Pregnant women... 

I want to expand on this aspect of role model and mentor. That role is an enormous burden on one s energy, and it is a burden that many women take on gladly but one person really cannot mentor the planet. After I proposed, in an editorial in Chemical Engineering News, that it was time to apply Title IX to chemistry departments and presented a truncated list of reasons why that was a rational proposal,15 I received reams of supportive e-mail from both men and women—students and faculty, as well as people in industry and government. 

That is an indictment on chemistry. I am talking about chemistry now. Chemistry gets more students in that first general chemistry course than any other discipline. We get them before the biologists do. We should be converting a lot of those students into chemistry. That is the issue, if you really want to look at it, not just minority students, but white students, women students, all kinds of students. 

I know that the subject of women was the topic of last year s chemical roundtable. I was given an article (by another person in the audience) describing last year s Chemical Sciences Roundtable workshop on women in the chemical workforce. It stated that the presence of faculty wives helped to create a comfortable environment for prospective women students. 

I believe that just as Isiah Warner s presence catalyzed a comfort level for African Americans, women faculty role models, rather than spouses, should be doing the same for women students. 

Though the (co-educational) universities (see Chaps. 3, 5, and 7) all claimed to welcome women students, their daily experience was often otherwise. We have included a selection of comments from student magazines by male correspondents that indicate significant hostility to the presence of women. Carol Dyhouse has summarised the situation ... 

In many cases they [women students] were excluded from membership of existing societies and student unions, and found it necessary (or expedient) to form their own. The presence of a minority group of women frequently served to underline rather than undermine the norms of the dominant male culture, and male students often went in for exaggerated displays of masculinity, particularly in informal settings, where... 

It may come as a surprise to many readers, but the proportion, and even the total number, of women students at university reached a maximum in the late 1920s the trend applied equally to women chemists.10 In Chap. 13, we examine this phenomenon and provide observations on the subsequent decline. 

Few of the first generation of women students at university studied science, and the majority of those came from a small number of schools.55 Janet Howarth reported on the secondary... 

At co-educational facilities, women students were often constrained as to where they were allowed to go. In several institutions, women had to enter lecture rooms through a different door from men, and it was common for the lecture room itself to have a separate ladies row or section. Yet to these women students of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, the slights and insults were a small price to pay for the excitement of being in the first assault on the bastions of learning to be in those hallowed halls, where studying philosophy or physics was a joy, an end in itself. 

By our standards, the activities of women students were severely circumscribed by the university rules, such as the need for chaperones. However, compared to the societal restrictions at home, universities were a haven of freedom for women. The historian J. F. C. Harrison described this feeling ... 

Thus, prior to that date, women students at King s were to be found not on the Strand, but in Kensington. 

She assailed those who argued that only pure or men s chemistry should be taught to women students ... 

In 1915, the arts and science departments of King s College for Women were transferred to the Strand, at last making King s College a co-educational institution — in theory. In reality, the absorbed women students and staff had to adapt to functioning... 

Some of the courses, including chemistry, were merged with other science subjects to form the Normal School of Science (named after the Ecole Normale in Paris). The Normal School of Science was renamed the Royal College of Science (RCS) in 1890. At first, the RCS saw itself primarily as a teacher training college in practical science and, as such, attracted women students including some from overseas. 

The article concluded with a note that 14 of the 15 women students then at IC agreed totally with the sentiments expressed in the article. 

One of the early women students was Kathleen Mary Leeds.70 Leeds was educated at Croydon High School (a GPDSC school) before entering the Royal College of Science in 1904 and graduating in 1908. In 1911, she was appointed Science Mistress at her former school, but died tragically in 1921. 

In addition to spearheading, along with Smedley, the admission of women to the Chemical Society and co-founding the Women s Dining Club of the Chemical Society, Whiteley was President of the Imperial College Women Students Association from the organisation s inception in 1912. The women students of the time referred to her as the Queen Bee. 03... 

Dyhouse, C. (1998). Women students and the London Medical Schools, 1914—1939 The anatomy of a masculine culture. Gender and History 10(1) 110—132. 

Pre-First World War, the distribution of the backgrounds of women students at provincial universities also differed substantially from those at Oxbridge, as Julie Gibert reported ... 

Though the first women students did not appear at Durham itself until 1896, the College of Physical Science, Newcastle, admitted women to lectures and laboratories from its opening in 1871. Women were able to register for the qualification of Associate of Science (A.Sc.), but Durham barred them from... 

The suffrage movement was an active issue at Armstrong College. In 1906, a very heated debate among the women students resulted in a vote of 29 in favour of women s suffrage and 55 against.12 As the author of the report noted Some of the suffragettes did not look very happy when the result was announced, however, several converts to the cause were made. 12... 

As at many co-educational colleges, it was understood that certain rows in the lecture room were unofficially reserved for women students. A student, J. Harold Bailey, described in 1892 how this fact had not been imparted to a new male arrival ... 

It was proposed by Mr. E. W. Smith and seconded by Mr. Slade that The Committee be asked to enquire into and report on the advisability of admitting women students into this society. On being put before the meeting the proposition was lost.28... 

It was then proposed by Dr. Hutton and seconded by Prof. Carpenter that The Union Committee be asked to grant permission for Dr. Ida Smedley to attend the meetings in the Union. The proposal was carried. It was proposed by Dr. N. Smith, seconded by Mr. S. R. Best carried that The committee shall at some special meeting or at the general meeting present a report on the question of admitting women students to membership of this society. 29... 

The reply to the request for Smedley to enter the union building was uncompromising The secretary read a letter from the Union secretaries stating that the Union Committee could not see their way to allow Dr. Ida Smedley to use the Union Rooms for any reason whatsoever. 30 In November 1907, the bar on women members was sustained "... It was decided that women students be not admitted as members of the Society as it would spoil the social nature of the meetings. 31... 

At the 26 October 1909 meeting, 12 of the 35 new student members were women, and the Minutes noted that business began After welcoming women students as new members of the Society. .. 33 It would seem that the barrier of location had been overcome by holding the Chemical Society meetings in the Women s Union instead and on 7 December 1909, Smedley presented her paper to the Society. 

This third contribution seemed to end the correspondence, but the exchange clearly indicates the degree of hostility facing women students from some of their male chemistry colleagues. 

The complaint was made in a letter of 1898 to the student magazine The Gryphon that the industrious and enthusiastic women students were showing up their laggardly male colleagues.52 The presence of women in the chemistry laboratory was equally unpopular, as a correspondent in 1902 reported ... 

Interestingly, at Manchester, it had been the males who were the stool-snatchers in the labs, perhaps Mancunian women students being less assertive, as was expressed in the rhyme A Lady s Lament in the Owens College Union Magazine of 1902 ... 

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