author
Emily Davies
1830–1921
A determined Victorian reformer, she helped open university education to women and became one of the driving forces behind Girton College, Cambridge. Her long campaign for equal academic standards and women’s rights made her a key figure in British feminist history.
1 Audiobook
The higher education of women
by Emily Davies
About the author
Born in Southampton in 1830, Emily Davies grew up in a clerical family and was educated largely at home. She became active in mid-19th-century reform circles, building close ties with campaigners including Barbara Bodichon and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, and soon focused her energy on one of the great barriers facing women: access to serious higher education.
Davies is best remembered as a principal founder of the women’s college first established at Hitchin in 1869 and later renamed Girton College, Cambridge. She argued that women should be taught to the same demanding standards as men, an unusually bold position for the time, and she also supported the wider cause of women’s suffrage.
She died in 1921, having lived long enough to see major changes in women’s public and educational opportunities, though not full equality at Cambridge in her lifetime. Her legacy endures through Girton and through the larger idea she fought for so persistently: that women deserved the fullest education available.