RIGHT TO USE EDUCATION

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28801, 23 January 1959, Page 2

RIGHT TO USE EDUCATION

Fight By Noted Women

Many outstanding women of the past century had to fight for their education and the right to use it with toil, sweat and tears, said Mrs W. Grant, Dominion president of the New Zealand Federation of University Women, when addressing the federation’s triennial conference in Christchurch yesterday. She mentioned, in particular, Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman doctor of medicine; Florence Nightingale*, Octavia Hill, whose first housing experiments were a pioneering effort; the Bronte sisters, Jane Eyre; Antoinette Brown, America's first woman preacher; and Marie Curie, joint discoverer of radium. Dr. Blackwell, applied to every medical college in America before she was accepted by Geneva College, New York State, from which she graduated with honours in 1849. But qualifying was only the first-step in the struggle. She had to fight against social ostracism and medical prejudice all her life >to establish herself as a doctor, said Mrs Grant In Geneva, when she was studying there, women she passed in the street drew their skirts aside, lest she contaminate them. To contemplate becoming a doctor then was as shocking as attending a public execution and quite as revolting. “The courage of such women as Dr. Blackwell and many others earned for us much of the freedom we enjoy today,” Mrs Grant said.