WOMEN SCHOLARS.

Evening Star, Issue 17928, 25 March 1922, Page 11

WOMEN SCHOLARS.

DISADVANTAGES COMPARED WITH

The Yorkshire Ladies’ Council of Education arranged at its fifty-fourth annual mooting a debate on ‘ Tho Success of Existing Methods of Education as Applied to Women. ’

Professor Gordon (professor of literature at Leeds University) said that in the matter of advanced education for women no man could remain unmoved by the audacity and courage shown by the pioneering women of tho last generation. He regretted tho more the entire absence of this spirit of audacity and originality in th university work of women students of to-day, and ; what was still more important, in their work after leaving the university, They did good service in school teaching and so on, but, unlike their male contemporaries, they appeared to do no original or creative work, aiid added nothing to knowledge. This was not true of literary students only; in philosophy, for example, mathematics, chemistry—to name a fow_ of the cardinal studies of a university—it was the same story ; a degree taken, often a distinguished degree, and after that a full stop. If they produced any work the chances were a thousand to one that it would bo purely imitative and reproductive. And yet wo know that women had capacities of insight and interpretation peculiar to themselves and denied to men. What was happening to their capacities? There was no sign of them in the work of academic women. Were they, then, pursuing wrong ends, or were they pursuing thorn in a wrong way ? Or was it premature to ask these questions? In his opinion it was not premature, tho whole matter demanded examination. The higher education which had been secured for women was a male education, patiently evolved bv men for men through many centuries. “This they had simply taken oyer, for it was a startling fact that to the subject of university education women had contributed, so far as he knew, not a single item. He would like to see a women ;s university or university college additional to those which men and women shared, where experiments could bo made on women’s education, and possibly new principles arrived at for tho better employment of their capacities. All education would benefit by such experiments, and not least tho existing universities where men and women work side by side. Mrs Kitson Clark, hon. secretary of tho council, doubted whether, if the women pioneers of education of fifty years ago could see what was now being done, they would admit Professor Gordon’s criticism. It was good for women to be called to consider whether tho education so .strenuously demanded was worth the winning. The only general test was good parenthood and good citizenship. Miss Gwyer, an Oxford graduate and a warden of tho Leeds University Hall, pointed out that tho way of the woman graduate wa.s not smoothed by fellowship; and that homo duties engulfed many original minds. She strongly deprecated the idea of a women’s university. Women derived fresh inspiration from men’s work.

Other speakers suggested that even now so few women were able to go to the imveraity compared with men that tho most original minds might still easily bo left outside.

Miss Emily Ford said that a_ woman could not have a wife to keep inviolate her hours of original work,_ and, Lady Dorothy Wood recalled how in war time tho men arranging women’s land work always assumed that the woman could oook har own dinner—a task which tho man was not supposed to have leisure for. Professor thwstang insisted on tho difference between men and women, not in the quality, but in the essential character of thoir minds. He agreed (with Professor Gordon that, considering thoir intense industry and often brilliant powers, thoir output was disappointing.