Emily Davies

Born in Southampton in 1830, Emily Davies became one of the leading figures in the struggle to open higher education to women in nineteenth-century Britain. She is best known for her role in founding Girton College, Cambridge, and for arguing that women should have access to the same serious academic standards as men.

Davies was active in the wider movement for women’s rights as well. She worked with other reformers on campaigns connected to education and women’s suffrage, and she wrote and spoke forcefully about the barriers facing women who wanted a fuller intellectual and public life.

She died in 1921, having seen major changes in opportunities for women, many of which she had spent decades helping to bring about. Her legacy endures through the institutions she helped build and the example she set as a practical, persistent reformer.