THE LAST SURRENDER.

Auckland Star, Volume LI, Issue 118, 18 May 1920, Page 4

THE LAST SURRENDER.

With the admission of women to de- ' grees at Oxford—Cambridge is reported to be considering whether it will follow ' suit, and no doubt it will—the victory 1 of the movement for the higher education of women is complete. After a long siege the last and most famous fortress has capitulated. The present ' generation has become so accustomed to ' the idea of women in Universities that ' probably Jew realise how quickly the " movement has developed. *No other of 1 Tennyson's poems seems so old-fashioned " and out of date as "The Princess," yet 1 the idea of a women's university was ■ in 1847, the date of the poem's publica- » tion, ahead of English events. The • beginnings of Girton College, Cambridge, • founded by a sister of Arthur Hugh - Clougb, the poet, date to 1860, and ' Xewnham, its companion institution, I was not opened until 1875. There are : many people who can remember tho 3 days when there were no women doctors. . One does not need to be old to remember ' the sensation caused when Miss Fawcett, ' 'brilliant daughter of notable parents, a , student of Newnham, came out above > the Senior wrangler in the Cambridge I Mathematical Tripos. Women were permitted to take the examinations, but 5 not the degrees, and the success of many • of them in competition with men did not [ soften the prejudices of convocation. So for decade after decade, women ' knocked in vain at the doors of the two ' most famous Universities in the King- ! dom, and they would probably be knockp ing still but .for the effect of the war in breaking down everywhere barriers so long erected against the sex. Other • Universities of Britain and the Empire I long since set the example to those hoary , I seats of conservatism. Dublin, we be- | lieve, was. the first institution in the Empire to admit women to its degrees, and our own University of New Zealand ran it dose for the honour. To New i Zealand belongs the distinction of providing the first woman graduate. Indeed in this country the right of women to 'be on the same footing as men in higher education seems never to have been seriously disputed. >"o' doubt there were here and there prejudices similar to those that bolted tlie doors at Oxford and Cambridge; woman's brain was inferior to man's, her proper place was the home, she was not fit for higher education, and she spoilt herself by seeking it—and so on. Fortunately, however, prejudice had much less power here than it had at Iloine. and in NewZealand, as everywhere else whore the right was granted, the results strengthened the agitation for justice. That ; justice has now been won, and the last stronghold of exclusiveness has been ', captured. j