Education and sex: the medical case against higher education for women in England, 1870-1900.

Abstract

IN ENGLAND during the 1870's opponents of higher education for women began to explain how mental strain affected the female reproductive system. Previously, written references to physiological details had been vague, alluding obliquely to results we all know but leaving them unspecified. During the 1870's the restraints of prudery snapped, and opponents were freed to write blunt descriptions of the gynecological dangers awaiting the university-educated woman. Why did this happen? The times demanded conclusive action: women by 1870 were already attending courses in London and Cambridge, albeit not officially as members of the universities; a few had even become doctors, and many others were being prepared to compete with boys for the university lower examinations. Simply by doing what they had been assured they could not do, women were showing that many of the arguments used against them were illusory. Authorities had demonstrated that women's brains weighed less than men's, that the bone structure of their heads was less mature-in short, that evolution had passed them by-and yet, this had not deterred a few women from competing successfully with men. However, medical practitioners had evidence at hand that, while a woman might succeed intellectually if she so desired, she could do so only at great risk to her femininity. Since the chemical basis for sexual differentiation was unknown, doctors believed that how one behaved, dressed, worked, and played at puberty controlled the proper development of primary and secondary sex characteristics. Those who opposed the changes taking place in women's education decided they could be stopped only by an open discussion of medical details previously unacknowledged. The changes in women's education effected in the previous thirty years had been great. With the opening in London of Queen's College, Harley

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