Catholic university in Ireland, it was provided that two members of the senate should be women; and Queen's University, Belfast, had three women in 1910 in its senate. Women may point with justifiable pride to the fact that within a very few years of their admission to university examinations, they provided at Cambridge both a senior classic and a senior wrangler. In America (see Co-education) the movement has gone much farther than in Great Britain.
The temperate, calm, earnest demeanour of women, both in the schools and in university life, awakened admiration and respect from all; and the movement brought into existence a vast number of women, as well-educated as men, hard-working, persevering and capable, who invaded many professions, and could hold their ground where a sound education was the foundation of success. The pioneers of female education spent their energies in developing their higher and more intellectual ideals, but later years opened up other positions which better education has enabled women to fill. In the literary field they soon invaded journalism (see Newspapers), and took an important place on the staffs of libraries and museums. They form an important (and in America, the predominating) section of the teaching profession in the state schools, and in all research work play an increasingly valuable part. It is not possible for every woman to be a scholar, a doctor (see below), a lawyer,[1] or possibly to attain the highest position in professions where competition with men is keen, but the development of women's work has opened many other outlets for their energies. As members of school boards, factory inspectors, poor law guardians, sanitary inspectors, they have had ample scope for gratifying their ambition and energy. The progress made in philanthropy and religious activity[2] is largely due to their devotion, under the auspices of countless new societies. And increasing provision has been made, in the arts and crafts, for the furtherance of their careers. There are successful women architects now working in England, and in 1905 a woman won the silver medal of the Royal Society of British Architects; a large number of women travel for business firms; in decorative work, as silversmiths, dentists, law copyists, proof-readers, and in plan tracing women work with success; wood-carving has become almost as recognized a career for them as that of typewriting and shorthand, in which an increasing number are finding employment. Agriculture and gardening have opened up a new field of work, and, with it, kindred occupations.
Women have always found a peculiarly fitting sphere as nurses, though it is only in recent years that nursing (q.v.) has Medicine. been professionalized by means of proper education. But their admission to the medical profession itself was one of the earliest triumphs of the 19th-century movement. It began in America, but was quickly followed up in England. After having been refused admission to instruction by numerous American medical schools, Miss Elizabeth Blackwell was allowed to enter as a student by the Geneva Medical College, N.Y., in 1847, from which she graduated in 1849. Hers was the first woman's name to be placed on the Medical Register of the United Kingdom (1859). In Great Britain the struggle to obtain admission to the teaching schools and to the examinations for medical degrees and diplomas was long and bitter. Though the Society of the Apothecaries admitted Mrs Garrett Anderson (q.v.) to their diploma in 1865, it was only after a series of rebuffs and failures that women were admitted to the degree examinations of the various universities. In August 1876 an “enabling” act was passed, empowering the nineteen British medical examining bodies to confer their degrees or diplomas without distinction of sex. In 1908 the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons decided to admit women to their diplomas and fellowships. In the meantime women doctors had become a common phenomenon.
Women in England may fill some of the highest positions in the state. A woman may be a queen, or a regent, and as queen Political position. regnant has, by 1 Mary, sess. 3, c. 1, as full rights as a king. Among the public offices a woman may hold are those of county, borough, parish and rural or urban district councillor, overseer, guardian of the poor, churchwarden and sexton. In 1908 Mrs Garrett Anderson was elected mayor of Aldeburgh, the first case of a woman holding that position. Women have also been nominated as members of Royal Commissions (e.g. those on the Poor Law and Divorce). A woman cannot serve on a jury, but may, if married, be one of a “jury of matrons” empanelled to determine the condition of a female prisoner on a writ de venire inspiciendo. She can vote (if unmarried or a widow) in county council, municipal, poor law and other local elections. The granting of the parliamentary franchise to women was, however, still withheld in 1910. The history of the movement for women's suffrage is told below. It may be remarked that, with or without the possession of a vote on their own account, politics in England have in modern times been very considerably influenced by the work of women as speakers, canvassers and organizers. The great Conservative auxiliary political organization, the Primrose League, owes its main success to women, and the Women's Liberal Federation, on the opposite side, has done much for the Liberal party. The Women's Liberal Unionist Association, which came into being in 1886 at the time of the Irish Home Rule Bill, also played an active part in defence of the Unionist cause.
The movement for the abolition of the sex distinction in respect of the right conferred upon certain citizens to share in the Women's suffrage. election of parliamentary representatives dates for practical purposes from the middle of the 19th century The governmental systems of the ancient world were based without exception on the view that women could take no part in state politics, except in oriental countries as monarchs. Exceptional women such as Cleopatra, Semiramis, Arsinoe, might in the absence of men of the royal house, and by reason of royal descent or personal prestige, occupy the throne, and an Aspasia might be recognized as the able head of a political salon, but women in general derived thence no political status. Though Christianity and a broadening of men's theories of life tended to raise the moral and social status of women, yet Paul definitely assigns subservience as the proper function of women, and many of the fathers looked upon them mainly as inheriting the temptress function of Eve. This view generally obtained throughout the middle ages, though here and there glimmerings of a new
- ↑ Women have long practised law in the United States, and in 1896 the benchers of the Ontario Law Society decided to admit them to the bar. In France in December 1900 an act was passed enabling women to practise as barristers, and Madame Petit was sworn in Paris, while a woman was briefed for the defence in a murder case in Toulouse in 1903, this being the first case of a woman pleading in a European criminal court. In Finland and Norway women have long practised as barristers, and in Denmark since 1908 they have been admitted as assistants to lawyers. By the law of the Netherlands they are admitted as notaries. In England a special tribunal of the House of Lords presided over by the Lord Chancellor decided in 1903 not to admit women to the English bar, on the grounds that there was no precedent and that they were not desirous of creating one; but numbers of women take degrees in law in British universities, and several have become solicitors.
- ↑ In the olden times before the Reformation in England various religious communities absorbed a large number of the surplus female population, and in High Church and Roman Catholic circles many ladies still enter various sisterhoods and devote their lives to teaching the young, visiting the poor and nursing the sick. In the Church of England the only office which remained open to women was the modest one of churchwarden, and this office is not infrequently filled by women. The Convocation of Canterbury in 1908 refused by a majority of two to admit women to parochial church councils, though qualified persons of the female sex may vote for parochial lay representatives on the church council. In the Independent Churches there are fewer restrictions. Among the Congregationalists women have equal votes on all questions and may become deacons or even ministers; Miss Jane Brown has been recognized as pastor of Brotherton Congregational Church, Yorkshire, and Miss L. Smith as pastor of that in Cardiff, and in the Methodist Church women frequently act as local preachers. The same equality and share in religious work is accorded to women by the Baptists, the Society of Friends and the Salvation Army, the success of which is largely due to them. In Unitarian congregations in the United States and Australia many women have been appointed ministers, and in England the Rev. Gertrude von Petzold held in 1910 the post of minister of the Narborough Road Free Christian Church, Leicester.
