Academic attainment and feminism?

Does anybody know? the first universities were dedicated to teaching religion, is this right? only many years later were people given what was termed a classical education and only recently women were even allowed in the door. I remember reading that women were not taught mathematics, had no need of it apperently until after 1900. Or was it something to do with the fact that men believed women were incapable of understanding it.

Same with religion, thats why women were not educated, so that they didn't question the status quo.

Seems to me that women have always been very able to understand both mathematics and theology, so the only way to ensure our subservience was to deny us the right to study either.

The reason I get interested in women like Hild, say, is that I think there are two separable levels of patriarchical oppression - one during the historical period these women lived in, and a second by people coming afterwards who whitewash that history, pretend women had less power and less impact than tehy did, and use that myth to argue that the current, modern status quo is excusable in relation to this fictionalized past.

I think it's important for teachers to look at that second level of sexism, as well as the first.

Oh yes - as I say, it's the nearest I can think rather than an perfect, just she is an interesting character. But I'd also agree entirely that women managed despite, rather than because of, Christian structures.

dittany - Hild of Whitby was head of a male/female convent. THat's the nearest I can think (and obviously isn''t woman-only, but woman-controlled with some women-only spaces within it). Just mentioning her for interest, though, as she's so unusual.

I call myself a feminist (though know a few people who would say I am not in rl as I have taken the carer role; one of us had to, it suited me better).

Have just submitted the research protocol for the final stage of my part time MA.

I used to work with nuns, many were amazing women but they all got very excited in quite a strange girly sort of way when the priest was coming to tea. It was quite strange.

I think that too, motherinferior. Btw, coming late to the party here, but I don't see why anyone would really want to argue that Julian of Norwich wasn't oppressed by patriarchial religion - that's why she had to re-write it.

She's said it

modern liberal feminism my point is made, proof if ever any was needed that feminism is liberalism to todays generation, will be for ever more because this is what is taught in universities

I am definitely feminist and have a D Phil from Oxford, and am an Oxford don. But before Oxford I thought it was malarkey. The place is just soooo male-dominated to this day that you HAVE to be feminist in self-defence.

SwallowedAfly, how shocking. Although male power is justified in all cultures and dressed up as "traditions" and made symbolic. In the west we appear less uncivilised but the truth is we condone such things by passing it off as civil liberties and rights to traditions and beliefs.

dittany I take your point, though I don't really agree with you. I take it you are not in the literary side of things - because to completely discount people's beliefs when examining their writing is completely unhelpful; context is very important, and faith can't be overlooked. Both in terms of teaching students, and looking at literature, ignoring people's personal beliefs is both unhelpful and disrespectful.
I'm going to do some work now, bye

It offered them women-only spaces, too.

Read some of those 1970s/early 1980s feminist novelists like Michele Roberts and Sara Maitland (actually, read the whole Tales I Tell My Mother collective, just because they're really good). There is interesting stuff there about working with and within and outside religious structures.

But those women used the forms, and the structures and strictures in which they found themselves, and made something with them. Religion - of which I am no great advocate - offered them the opportunity to read, and think, and write. And to act, outside the domestic sphere. You can't just say 'but it oppressed them' and ignore what they did with it.

I'm kind of wishing I hadn't started this now as I really have to get on with marking! But dittany I'm not saying patriarchal religion was as liberating to women as, say, modern liberal feminism is; I'm just saying it has to be taken into account. BTW I give them details of organisations such as the Fawcett Society, and try to encourage them to see feminism as something very much alive and significant today.
queenbathsheba I do wonder sometimes why people do degrees. I also wonder why they take this course if they are not interested in feminism (given that it's an optional course!)

queenbathsheba I do want to influence their thinking! I make it clear that these aren't just historical issues, and show how it is relevant today; I just don't think one can force the issue. But if I didn't believe in it, I wouldn't teach it.

I just wanted to say also that in view of Auroras comment that many women are just looking for a rich husband, why do they even need a degree, surely a grounding in feminist theory and womens rights might be more useful when negotiating housework, domestic violence, male rights to have sex, infedelity, rights to the economic spoils of their DHs work etc,