Oxford recognises 100-year anniversary of the formal admission of women

Women were first granted full membership to the University on 7 October 1920 and then, one week later, were given the right to be awarded degrees. Women students who had been denied a degree since the late 1870s began to return to the University to claim them. To mark the importance of this event in Oxford’s history, the ‘Women Making History Centenary’ campaign will run throughout this academic year, across the colleges and University.

A range of events and initiatives will run across the University to encourage students, staff and the wider public to engage with the historic milestones and pioneering individuals who transformed a once male-only space to the Oxford of today, which now awards degrees to more women members than men. The University has admitted more women undergraduates than men for the last two years consecutively.

 

As a key part of the centenary, the University is also announcing that Professor Brenda E Stevenson has been appointed as the first Hillary Rodham Clinton Chair of Women’s History at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of St John’s College. The newly created Hillary Rodham Clinton Chair of Women’s History will enhance Oxford’s existing work in women’s history by undertaking outstanding, pioneering research, and transforming how the subject is taught and studied at Oxford.