author
Emily Davies
1830–1921
A determined reformer who helped open university education to women in Britain, she is best known as a founder of Girton College, Cambridge. Her life joined practical institution-building with a long campaign for women's rights and serious academic opportunity.
1 Audiobook
The higher education of women
by Emily Davies
About the author
Born in Southampton in 1830, Emily Davies became one of the key figures in the struggle to expand women's education in Britain. Although she herself was educated largely at home, she grew into a forceful writer, organizer, and campaigner who believed women should have access to the same demanding education as men.
She worked closely with other leading reformers of her time, including Barbara Bodichon and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, and played a central role in creating the college that became Girton College, Cambridge, founded in 1869. Davies insisted on high academic standards and argued that women should be taught and examined on equal terms, helping to change expectations about what women could study and achieve.
Alongside her educational work, she was also involved in the early movement for women's suffrage. She died in 1921, having lived long enough to see major progress in causes she had spent decades advancing, and she remains closely associated with the opening of higher education to women in England.