WOMEN IN OXFORD TO-DAY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 212, 8 September 1938, Page 16

WOMEN IN OXFORD TO-DAY.

Traditional Struggle

For Position.

(By HELEN COATES.)

Women in Oxford to-day inherit a tradition of struggle. For over 50 years their predecessors have been lighting for their rights, lighting as only feminists can. Now that their position is more or less established, the battle is not fought so fiercely but its spirit still lingers. And there is still much to be attained, much that might be improved in the position of Oxford undergraducttes." To outsiders, it may or may not seem a reasonable idea that in fet. Hugh's College, for instance, every woman must be in the College by eleven o'clock. If she is working late in the evening, and perhaps wants to take a stroll in the gardens for relaxation, murmuring scraps of Horace or (ieranl Manly Hopkins' sonnet on Oxford to herself, she may not! Instead, she sits and drinks coffee with the other inhabitants of her corridor and talks about politics, or life, or man. . . . or sometimes perhaps, men! This restriction becomes a nuisance when a film or a club meeting finishes about a quarter to eleven, and she cannot go and take supper and chat, but must hastily scramble on hor bike and shoot off down the Banbury Koad. Shackles on Freedom. Cncc a week she may get late leave !#i.r a theatre, and three times a term leave may be extended to twelve o'clock for dances. Perhaps it must be remembered, however ... on the side of the authorities. . . that men are only allowed on- of college till twelve o'clock, and also that these restrictions preserve the health of the girls for their work. It may be true to say that 60 per cent of the women are undisturbed by these shackles on their freedom, because, unlike the men, women in Oxford must work! The competition to enter a women's college is very ffreat. Last year. 250 girls applied to enter one college; which had 50 places to spare. The standard is also very high. In the entrance papers for English literature, my Enirlish tutor had to choose six people out of 00 for acceptance, and in marking these papers, there was not one she found that she could flatly turn down upon first perusal. The final choice usually hangs upon the interview. One looks round one's college dining-room sometimes and shudders at the thought of so many truly clever women all gathered into one place!

But there are many of these women who, though interested in their work, both for vocational and cultural purposes, wish to lead a full life while they are in Oxford. They want to go in for sports of all kinds, to meet all types of people, and to join in all the different clubs. It is upon these people that the restrictions fall most heavily. If a woman wishes to go in for dramatic work, she can only do so with the permission of her "moral tutor" (a figure of centuries' standing). And then she may not act in the Oxford University Dramatic Society (known as "Ouds"). This is reserved for men. Beautiful actresses from London come down to "inspire" the Ouds in their acting. A University woman may act in the Experimental Theatre Society, which has not the money to work with that Ouds has, and so cannot put on such good productions. Airing Her Views. Also, if a woman wants to air her views in public. . . . apart from the nightly airing they have in her college corridor. . . she may not be a member of, or speak at any time in the Oxford UnioaL This well-known body is supposed te be a model of the House of Commons, but it has not yet reached the stage of universal enfranchisement, and women 6till sit in the gallery. Periodically, the matter is put to the vote, but it is traditionally defeated. The Socialist*, with ideals of liberty, equality, fraternity, nearly all vote for the women, the Conservatives, "keeping up the old tradition," nearly all against them. But these struggles with the men. are not so important to the women as their struggles with college authorities. Last year it was hoped something might be done through a body which was collected together, composed of the presidents of all the college junior college rooms—men's and women's. The Oxford University has nothing resembling a governing, or even representative student body. The spirit is a college spirit in

Oxford, and not a university spirit— j except when it comes to the rowing race 1 against Cambridge! Hence this body] could do little. All the women can do is gently and persistently to make pleas and representations to their college principals, who are mostly (one notoriously) of rather an adamantine temperament! • But we must count our blessings and remember that in Cambridge women cannot even get a degree officially in these days, and have not progressed half so far in their fight as we. '

However, as a note to New Zealand people (and particularly parents), I think that the result of all these restrictions is the youtlifulness, and lack of independence and initiative of the average English girl of university age —-as opposed to the average New Zealand girl.