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Oxford University has today launched a campaign in recognition of the 100-year anniversary of the formal admission of women students.

The first women to be awarded degrees at Oxford University © Lady Margaret Hall

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.

Among the activities planned for the centenary are: 

  • An interactive timeline charting the University’s gender-equality journey so far
  • Centenary women’s walking tour app of Oxford, bringing to life the changes of the last 100 years
  • The launch of a new interactive resource and information hub: Education and Activism: Women at Oxford
  • University, 1878–1920, featuring a comprehensive  collection  of original documents from the former women’s colleges and the Bodleian Libraries which illuminate the campaign for women’s education in Oxford.
  • 'A thing inexpedient and immodest': women in the University of Oxford's School of Geography - Friday 16 October, 13.30 - 15.00 (online)
  • Dr Elizabeth Baigent, Reader in the History of Geography at the University of Oxford and former Research Director of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, will host an online event, which uncovers the contribution of women to Oxford's School of Geography
  • A major public lecture, to be held at the iconic Sheldonian Theatre in May 2021, with key speaker details to be confirmed in due course.

The full details are available on the University of Oxford website