Conclusion

I have described the feelings and experiences of two young women, Alma and Helmi, whose educational careers differed. Alma was one of the first Finnish female doctors. However, both Alma and Helmi, like many other upper middle-class women, earned their living by writing.

Alma Soderhjelm was one of the first women to obtain a doctoral degree, and in 1906 she became the first woman in Finland to become a docent. As a woman, she could not get a professorship in the early twentieth century, so she created a career for herself as a journalist and author. She wrote novels, essays, short stories, and columns. In 1927, Soderhjelm was invited to become a professor of general history at Abo Akademi University, which was founded in 1919 for the Swedish-speaking minority of Finland (Engman 1996, 61–66; Soderhjelm 1931, 372–373; Kaarninen 2017, 256–285). At twenty years old, Helmi Krohn married a future politician and professor, had four children, and made the exceptional decision of divorcing her husband after more than twenty years of marriage. After the divorce, she earned her living by translating books; editing a children’s magazine; and writing criticism, novels, and biographies (Leskelä-Kärki 2006, 677).

In 1901, more than thirty years after the first women had taken the matriculation examination, women received the same rights as men to study at university; special dispensation was no longer required. At the University of Helsinki, the degrees and courses were the same for women and men, and—in this respect—the female and male students were equal. The acceptability of co-education and the establishment of such schools from the 1880s onwards was a significant turning point in the education of girls.

The aim of the Fennoman movement was to improve the status of the Finnish language. This language question created the borderlines of female education.

First, the old Fennomans could not see the sense in female higher education. They thought that it was strongly against the so-called female vocation of motherhood. Later, when the new co-educational Finnish-speaking schools needed students and the schools became part of the language campaign, the number of Finnish-speaking girls began to increase at the university.

It was important for the first generation of female students that they had mentors and supporters who understood the idea of female higher education. Self-evidently, these supporters came from the young women’s own family circles: their mentors were parents or older sisters and brothers. The idea of higher education for girls demanded that families understood that their daughters needed education and an occupation. The status of female students at university offers a glimpse at the Finnish gender system: to take the matriculation examination, women needed dispensation for their gender, but when they received it, they were nevertheless kept outside the students’ associations. On the university’s printed registers, male students were grouped according to their student association (nation), whereas the female students were placed in the separate table titled ‘Female students’. These registers symbolise how the female students were outsiders and belonged to the ‘inferior’ sex. When the number of women was low, this was not a major problem. However, when the number of female students increased and dispensation was a plain formality, the rejection of the female students’ applications for membership of the students’ associations caused great disappointment. Eventually, some of the student associations began to invite female students to their meetings, albeit as guests; from 1897, female students were accepted as full members of the student associations. It had previously not been easy for upper middle-class girls to keep company with young men, but now the associations offered a new forum for young women to socialise with their male peers.

Finally, in the early twentieth century, it was understood that female students did not cause any harm and disorder at the university.

The first female students created quite a new female category: academically educated women. Even though not all of them went on to earn a university degree, the first generation of female students paved the way for others to such an extent that no one questioned a woman’s right to study at university. Women graduated as physicians, dentists, and—first and foremost—teachers. Completing the matriculation examination also opened the way for women to take on jobs in banks, post offices, commercial enterprises, and insurance companies, clearing the path for subsequent generations. This special group of women participated in many ways in building modern Finland: they took possession of some fields of Finnish society and created the idea of societal motherhood and the foundation of the welfare society.

Notes

1. Additionally in the UK, women studied at civic universities. See Barnes (1996).

2. The autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland was a territory of the Russian Empire. As the only university in Finland, the main task of the Imperial Alexander University was to educate civil servants for the state administration for the Czar’s bureaus. The Royal Academy of Turku was founded in 1640. In 1809, the university was renamed the Imperial Academy of Turku. The University was again renamed the Imperial Alexander University when it was moved to Helsinki in 1828, and its name was once more changed—to the University of Helsinki—in 1919. In this chapter I use name University of Helsinki. Since women were not allowed to act as state officers, university education for women was seen needless and difficult to understand.

3. I have collected my data (collective biography) using the student register (student rolls) of the University of Helsinki as the main research material. My data contain information on all girls who took their matriculation examination between 1885 and 1900 and studied at the university.

When I began this project, I used microfilms of the student rolls, but now this material has been digitised and is available on the Internet. The student rolls contain the students’ name, date and place of birth, school, degrees at the university, father’s name and occupation, and marital status. In addition, I have used several other registers, memoirs, biographies, and private archives.

4. In 1871, women received the opportunity to study at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Helsinki. Rosina Heikel took a medical degree at the University of Helsinki in 1878, and the czar granted her a dispensation to practise medicine provided she exercised her profession on women and children.

5. In the nineteenth century, the majority of Finns were Finnish-speaking, but Swedish remained the language of administration and the civil service. Following campaigns by the Fennoman movement, the status of Finnish was improved via language legislation from the early 1860s onwards.

6. Professor Julius Krohn died in 1888; after his death, the situation was difficult in the family. Perhaps this could be one reason.

7. Wellesley College, Massachusetts, USA, was established in 1870, and its doors were opened to students in 1875.

8. The white cap with the golden lyre has since the 1870s been the symbol of the Finnish student. White-capped students have been potent symbols of Finnish educational optimism. The first female students did not use the same cap as male students; instead, they ordered a specific female cap with a special design, and female students used this special cap until the middle of the 1890s. Kaarninen and Kaarninen (2002, 143–144).

9. Stockholm College was founded in 1878. It offered an alternative to the traditional universities in Lund and Uppsala. Without the matriculation exam, it was possible to take a degree.

10. Maria Tschetschulin, Emma Irene Astrom, and Rosina Heikel were important models for the first generation. Astrom was known as the first woman in Finland to have taken a master’s degree (in 1882).

About Emma Irene Astrom, see Astrom (1967).

11. The members came from the Häme area in the southern part of Finland.

Conclusion

More on the topic Conclusion: