Why did women go to university?

28 replies

CatsAreAssholes · 24/08/2017 06:06

Inspired by the 'how were things different for your grandmother' thread.

I was just wondering about the way women in professions were expected to give up their job after they got married, this combined with the expectation of an early marriage would have made Uni fairly pointless if you see it as a means to employment. I'd have thought at the time higher education for educations sake would have seemed very impractical. Unless it was seen as a back up plan for women who couldn't find a husband or a means of meeting one?

OP posts:

SpaghettiAndMeatballs · 24/08/2017 07:29

I would think there was an element of making yourself an interesting wife at one point though

That's a problem in India at the moment - a demand for wives to be highly educated women, but not actually then not practicing as a lawyer/GP/whatever once they're married.

nooka · 24/08/2017 07:26

I don't think that university was seen as a means to employment for my parents generation, at least not in the way it's seen now. More of a rite of passage perhaps, definitely an extension of education, and much more of a straight academically experience. Also as you say for the women an opportunity to meet men of a similar background, bearing in mind that it was only a fairly small section of the population that went to university then.

My mother only had a professional job for a year or two after she graduated as she gave up work (as expected) after she got married (and started a family almost immediately). Her parents were wealthy, and university cheap. If she hadn't gone to university I expect she would probably just have got married when she was younger, and probably never worked at all.

My grandmother that went to university came from a highly academic family, married someone similarly academic and while she didn't have a career as such (or a job for that matter) continued her academic pursuits well into her 80s. She went to Oxford only ten years after it was possible to get degrees at all there. This article says that the advocates for higher education for women around the turn of the century had to argue that it led to women being better wives and mothers with lots of health checks to make sure that the women weren't being damaged through too much use of their brains.

MrsTrentReznor · 24/08/2017 06:31

I'd say the same reason that retirees do university courses, interest and a need to learn. Just because you don't have to do the degree doesn't mean you shouldn't.
If I had the choice between a university education or honing my embroidery skills, I know what I would pick! 😀
I would think there was an element of making yourself an interesting wife at one point though.

Unflip

1 2