Women’s Parade
Nearly two-thirds of the first generation of female students studied at the Department of History and Philology, while less than one-third studied at the Department of Natural Sciences at the Faculty of Philosophy.
Five percent studied at the Faculty of Law. Three women studied theology. Those women whose true ambition lay in a career in medicine first studied natural sciences to complete a preliminary degree in medicine before moving on to the Faculty of Medicine.The status of women at the university was contradictory and difficult. They had to explain repeatedly why they wanted to study at the university and why they needed an academic degree, and they also had to prove that they were capable of doing this. The women were forced to fight against the prejudice of male students and professors. The newspapers characterised the increase in female students in terms of a women’s parade. Some professors were asked about the female students’ attitude towards their studies and the women’s capacity to cope in their exams, exercises, and laboratory work. Some of the professors opined that female students lacked independence and needed more support than men. Some also thought that it was impossible to make the same demands of female and male students; young women were seen as immature and fickle. On the other hand, others answered that the women worked harder and were more conscientious compared to the men (Niemi 2001, 44).
The aim of university studies was an academic degree. In 1907, Rector Edvard Hjelt compiled a statistical analysis of the studies and degrees of female students. The results reveal that of the 519 women who matriculated between 1870 and 1899, only about twenty-five percent left the university with a degree. During the same time, fifty-nine percent of male students graduated. Among those who began their studies in 1885–1893, the proportion of women graduating was higher, at forty-one percent (Hjelt 1907).
However, the numbers in Hjelt’s research do not reveal the whole truth. Women who began their studies during the 1890s could come back as late as in the 1920s to continue. Many women of the first generation did not study at all at the university. They moved to other educational institutions where they could gain vocational qualifications and professional competence faster and more easily. The role of the matriculation examination was also undergoing a process of change. For women, it was no longer an entrance examination to academic studies: it was a goal in itself. Matriculation became a maturity test and the final exam of upper secondary school. Furthermore, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the matriculation examination was highly appreciated and could open doors to the labour market for women.
My research indicates that about a third of the first generation of female students graduated from university. Overall, half graduated from the university or a vocational institution. Of the 624 female students, 191 graduated from the University of Helsinki. Nine women from this first generation continued their studies at the doctoral level—one of them being Alma Soderhjelm, who defended her dissertation in 1900—and 130 graduated with a master’s degree, most of them qualifying as teachers by taking a pedagogic exam. Twenty of these women gained business, economics, or administrative qualifications. The women were hardworking students; several of them obtained two qualifications and continued their studies during their career via field trips abroad.
Five percent of the women in the first generation qualified as physicians. The proportion of female students at the Faculty of Medicine was rather low considering that the admission of women to the university studies had been justified by the need for female physicians. Among the women at the Faculty of Medicine, twelve qualified in odontology.
The career of Walborg Rabergh illustrates how women could seize new opportunities.
Many women had a career before they began their academic studies, and some wanted to change their occupation. Walborg took the matriculation examination at the age of twenty-one in May 1894. After that, she worked as a bookkeeper at the Customs Department and the State Railway. She wanted to do something new, so after six years she went back to university to continue her studies. She graduated in 1908 as an odontologist. At first, she had a private practice, but later she gained employment as the director of the municipal dental dispensary in Helsinki. Carin Johansson likewise belonged to the first group of Finnish female dentists. She became a pioneer in the area of orthodontics by continuing her studies at the famous Angle School of Orthodontia in the USA in 1905–1906. She also published several scientific articles in Finland and abroad in the field of orthodontics (Bergholm 1917). Five women graduated as engineers or architects from the Polytechnic Institute. This institute gained university status in 1908 and was renamed Helsinki University of Technology (Nykänen 2007, 41).The aim of many female students was a career in teaching. More than a third of the female students (thirty-seven percent) worked at some phase of their life as teachers. Elementary schools and secondary schools formed one part of the Finnish school system where qualified teachers were needed. In the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, a modern education society was taking shape; several new educational institutions—such as vocational schools, folk high schools, reformatories, and schools for special groups—were established, and qualified female teachers in particular were needed at these institutions. A vocational degree from a teacher’s seminar was of great value in the labour market. Besides being employed at educational institutions, female teachers found work in various organisations and associations for societal child welfare and supervision work.
A master’s degree followed by completion of the pedagogic exam gave graduates the qualifications needed to be a teacher in state and private secondary schools.
In fact, there were more unqualified teachers at private secondary schools than there were at state schools. A master’s degree opened doors for women to take lecturer positions (senior teachers) in state secondary schools and gradually widened women’s career opportunities in the field of education. However, women had to strive to get the same salary for the same teaching work as their male colleagues. Female teachers also had difficulties in private co-educational schools. Even though they had a university degree and the number of lessons and working conditions were the same for the male and female teachers, the salary paid to female teachers was lower. In 1900, one in every ten teachers at gymnasiums was a woman. Ten years later, the proportion of women was eleven percent (Junila 2013, 186–203).Jyväskylä Teacher Training College opened its doors in 1863; by the beginning of the twentieth century, the number of teacher-training colleges in Finland had risen to seven. In the late nineteenth century, qualified elementary school teachers had a strong position in the labour market. New legislation was enacted in municipalities to establish elementary schools, and the number of elementary schools increased throughout the country; there were 1,873 upper elementary school in 1900, and the number had risen to 2,903 by 1911 (Rantala 2011, 266–300; Rinne 1988, 108, 119–120; Kivinen and Rinne 1994, 518–519).
There were two ways to gain access to the teacher’s seminar. Girls who had studied for five or six years and had graduated from a girls’ school could apply. The other route involved coming from the university. Women who had studied at the University of Helsinki and wanted to gain a qualification as an elementary school teacher left the university to participate in the entrance examination of the teacher’s seminar. It was easy for girls who had taken the matriculation examination. A year’s studies gave them the expertise and the opportunity to fill a permanent vacancy.
The matriculation examination was seen as a good basis for the studies at the teacher’s seminar, and it took the university students only one year to qualify as a competent elementary school teacher. The special one-year courses were developed for this group (hospitanttiluokka). Without the matriculation exam (university status), teacher training took from three to five years, depending on basic training. A career as an elementary school teacher was safe and proper for a middle-class girl who had to earn her living.
Nearly one-tenth of all female students qualified as primary school teachers, and the portion of elementary school teachers was even higher among girls with a working-class background. Of these girls, about seventeen percent aimed at a career as an elementary school teacher. The matriculation exam and a couple of years at the university before the teacher’s seminar meant that the educational level of female elementary school teachers was higher than that of the male teachers, who started at the teacher’s seminar after six years of elementary school (Valtonen 2013, 161–172).
Table 10.3 Occupation of the first generation of university female students
| Occupation | Frequency | % |
| Teachers | 230 | 54.1 |
| Secondary school teachers | 95 | |
| Elementary school | 68 | |
| Folk high school teachers | 8 | |
| Kindergarten teachers | 6 | |
| Other teachers, unspecified | 53 | |
| Civil servants, officers, clerks (bank, post, state, insurance companies, customs) | 107 | 25.2 |
| Physicians, dentists | 32 | 7.3 |
| Nurses, public health nurses, masseuses | 11 | 2.6 |
| Writers, actors, musicians (art) | 12 | 2.8 |
| Librarians | 10 | 2.4 |
| Researchers | 5 | 1.3 |
| Social work, child welfare | 14 | 3.4 |
| Farmers | 4 | 0.9 |
| All | 425 | 100.0 |
Female students studied at commercial schools and institutions from where they qualified for business and banking.
The first generation of female students filled vacancies in banks, post offices, customs offices, insurance companies, and many other state offices. Among these women were many who had senior roles as chief accountants, office managers, treasurers, and holders of procuration. One of these women worked for several decades as a shorthand typist in the Finnish parliament. Many women remained for their whole working life at the same office, bank, or post office. At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, the matriculation examination developed into a route into occupations that became typically female, such as a clerical work. The matriculation examination in conjunction with some lectures or short courses at university provided the qualifications for this kind of work. In addition, the postal service and railway staff had their own training organisation.Many of those women who did not graduate from the University of Helsinki studied abroad. More than one in ten belonged to this group. The studies conducted abroad can be divided into three different types. First, a third wanted to study languages at European universities. Second, at the beginning of the twentieth century, there were no institutions in Finland training people for social work in kindergartens and children’s homes. This kind of professional field was still taking shape. Young women had to study abroad to gain education for occupations like social work, childcare, and physiotherapy. Third, although nursing training courses had been organised at the Surgical Hospital in Finland since 1889, among the first generation there were women who qualified as nurses and physiotherapists in Stockholm, as social workers in Geneva, and as nursery teachers in London.
Thyra Gahmberg took her matriculation exam in 1898. Instead of starting full-time studies at the university, she was accepted as an apprentice at the kindergarten in Sornäinen, Helsinki (Meretniemi 2011, 255–265). Two years later, she went to study in London at the Sesame House. This institution was established as a kindergarten and educational institution based on the ideas and models of Johann Pestalozzi and Friedrich Frobel (Brehony 2014, 187–188). After finishing her studies at Sesame House, she became the inspector of kindergartens for the City of Helsinki. She took several study trips to Sweden, Denmark, Austria-Hungary, England, and France before World War I. Gahmberg was involved in the planning and construction of the Finnish child welfare system, and she sat on several committees in this field.