More women than men are now entering universities in the UK. In 2002-3 they constituted 56 per cent of first degree graduates, more than double the proportion in the 1920s. Professor Carol Dyhouse at the University of Sussex has researched the pattern of change in the proportion of women entering higher education over the last century and the influences underpinning it.
Key findings
The pattern of change in the twentieth century.
Dyhouse's research demonstrates that the proportion of women students was characterised by a period of stagnation from the 1930s to the 1960s, with the figure for the late 1960s little higher than the 25 per cent achieved in the mid 1920s. There was a slight fall around the depression of the 1930s, followed by a rise during the Second World War and another fall after that. The real turning point came in the early 1970s and could not solely be accounted for by changes in the provision for teacher training.
The causes of the stagnation up to the 1960s
The research identified three "categories of explanation" for the period of stagnation up to the 1960s:
- Discrimination in access and provision - there were restrictions on the number of places for women students in medicine and other subjects, and quotas for women students were in place at Oxford and Cambridge, where single sex colleges effectively limited the numbers of women undergraduates.
- Employment opportunities for women were limited with intense controversy surrounding the issue of the employment of married women.
- There was a strong trend towards early marriage after the Second World War - with 40 per cent of brides being under 21 in 1965 compared with 15 per cent in 1921
Accounting for the growth from 1970
The rise in women's participation in higher education was the result of four factors which, though rooted in the previous decade, had their strongest impact from 1970 onwards.
- The demographic changes brought about by the 'sexual revolution' reversed the trend to early marriage - the availability of the contraceptive pill and legalized abortion enabled women to take a longer-term view of their futures.
- The creation of the 'new universities' of the 1960s, with their innovatory broadly based curricula, proved particularly attractive to women students.
- Feminism and equal opportunities legislation effectively brought to an end the gender 'quotas' in subjects such as medicine and hastened the change to co-education in Oxbridge colleges.
- Changes in employment opportunities for women graduates, in part the result of equality legislation, but also related to a decline in the recruitment of teachers, pushed women into other areas of graduate employment.
Women graduates' employment patterns.
Dyhouse found that discussions as to whether a university education for women was a 'wasted investment' continued at policy level well into the 1960s. The situation began to change in the 1970s and by 1990 the proportion of women graduates absorbed by teaching had shrunk dramatically whilst the proportion entering the commercial world had become roughly equal to men. The research also found that women's 'successes' in education had not been matched by equivalent success or material reward in the world of work. Starting salaries for women graduates lagged behind those of their male counterparts, the gap becoming even wider at the end of the 1990s. Moreover, in the five years following graduation the divergence increased. Noting that over a working life, a woman graduate can expect to earn 12 per cent less than a male graduate, Professor Dyhouse concludes "The value of a university education, seen purely as a monetary investment, is considerably less for women than for men."
Further Information
The research project - ESRC RES-000-22-0139 - was, entitled "Gaining Places: Stagnation and Growth in the Proportion of Women in Universities" and was undertaken in the Department of History at the University of Sussex by Professor Carol Dyhouse who can be contacted at C.A.Dyhouse@sussex.ac.uk
Key words
Women, students, university, graduate, equal opportunities, discrimination, gender quotas, equal pay, teaching, quotas, higher education, women's history
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