Introduction: Research Data, Methods, and Concepts
From the 1860s, universities across Europe underwent a process of change as they began to accept female students. In Switzerland, women’s access to higher education began at the end of the 1860s.
Nearly 2,000 women were registered at Swiss universities in 1906–1907, and eighty-five percent of them were foreigners. Most of them came from the Russian Empire. In 1878, the University of London was the first university to admit women in the United Kingdom. Female students were often admitted to classes in colleges that later became part of chartered institutions with full university status. Furthermore, eight women’s colleges were established in Cambridge and Oxford from 1869 to 1893 (Dyhouse 1995; Tylecote 1941; Ringer 2004, 247–248; Gibert 1994, 405–406; Barnes 1994).1In June 1870, Swedish women received the right to participate in the matriculation examination, study for a degree in medicine, and practise as physicians by royal degree. Full rights to university studies were granted to Swedish women in 1872, although the faculties of theology remained closed to them (Stromholm 1992, 243–267; Schanberg 2004, 95; Hammar 2000, 12–29).
In this chapter, I examine a transitional period in Finnish higher education, a time when young women became interested in higher education and academic degrees on a larger scale. From 1885 to 1900, the number of female students increased year by year, and the presence of female students became quite ordinary. In 1895, women constituted around fifteen percent of the new university student body, and five years later the proportion of women had increased to twenty percent. I examine the family values, attitudes, and transitions concerning the higher education of girls in Finland and highlight the processes by which parents began to appreciate their daughters’ education. I analyse the cultural features that preceded and resulted in the appearance of female students and explore how the female students experienced being women in a male-dominated community.
To analyse these issues, I concentrate on the first generation of Finnish female students by constructing a social portrait of these women.
I look at who they were and where they came from—their backgrounds, circumstances, studies, degrees, and careers. I define the first generation as all those women who took the matriculation examination between 1885 and 1900. This exam was actually the entrance examination to university. To gain the right to take this exam and to study at the university (there was only one university in Finland at the time), they had to apply for a dispensation from the vice-chancellor of the Imperial Alexander University (University of Helsinki). In 1901, women received the same rights as men to study at university, and dispensation was no longer needed (Klinge 2004, 125; Kaarninen and Kaarninen 2002, 92–94, 98–101).2 In defining the group, the main point is that these female students shared a common experience, and this caused a strong spirit of solidarity among them. As Heini Hakosalo has noted, gender was enough to bind women together (Hakosalo 2016, 222, see also Soderhjelm 1929, 101–102).My research data contain the details of 624 female students.3 Analysing the whole group, I use collective biography—or prosopography—as my research method (Cowman 2012, 83–85). As Donald Broady defines it, prosopography is the study of individuals belonging to the same field (Broady 2002, 381–382; Uotila 2014, 242–247; Keats-Rohan 2007, 144–145; see also: Cowman 2012, 85; Caine 2010, 58; Lamberg et al. 2009, 230–232; Hakosalo 2016, 209–210). My aim is to understand women who were simultaneously actors in the same field. In addition, I am interested in individuals, their life stories, and their experiences at university. To uncover this information, I have used memoirs; biographies; novels (fiction); and the registers of several schools, colleges, and educational institutions as source material.