Women In Academia: The Past and Present of Women at the University of St Andrews

Since 2017, women have comprised the majority of students in Higher Education in the U.K, making up around 57% of enrolled students nationwide. St. Andrews follows this national trend closely with 58% of its student body consisting of female students, with a female majority at every entry level apart from research postgraduates (however, even this male majority is only marginal at 51.7%). Despite women making up over half of the student body, and a female Principal, Sally Mapstone, at its core, female professors at St. Andrews are lacking, accounting for only 20% of professors at the university. Evidently, whilst a gender gap might not be present in the general student body at the university, more can be done to retain women beyond undergraduate and masters programmes and encourage them to pursue leadership roles within academics. If such inspiration can be found anywhere, it is in St. Andrews’s rich history of female academics who found success and recognition in a  world of academic opposition. 

In 1862, Elizabeth Garrett became the first woman to be matriculated into St. Andrews University. Her physical entrance into the university was blocked by Senatus on legal grounds and she was struck from class lists as she was prevented from attending. Nonetheless, despite such obstacles to her academic career at the university, Garrett’s determination prevailed as she went on to pass the exams of the Society of Apothecaries in 1865 and in 1873 became the first female member of the British Medical Association. When asked about her success, Garrett replied that “the first thing women must learn is to dress like ladies and behave like gentlemen”, immortalising her as a figure of female rights for years to come. Gareth is now honoured at the university through the creation of the ‘Elizabeth Garrett Mentoring Programme’, created for women in senior levels in academia at the University of St Andrews. The programme “aims to support women in, or aspiring to, academic leadership roles, and to develop leadership capability”, a step towards closing the gender gap in the representation of women at senior levels of academia and an act of encouragement for the university’s future female professors. 

Whilst Garrett was the first female matriculated student, the first woman to graduate from the University of St.Andrews was Agnes Forbes Blackadder who graduated with an M.A in 1895. Blackadder, like Garrett before her, was a driven and determined woman, who, in order to graduate ahead of her cohort, compressed her studies by taking subjects concurrently. After her studies at St. Andrews, Blackadder continued her education at the University of Glasgow before pursuing a distinguished medical career, becoming one of the first female consultants at St John’s hospital for skin diseases, an immense achievement at the time considering it was a hospital not exclusive to women. Her career as a doctor included being one of only three doctors to study the effects of force-feeding on suffragettes enforcing a hunger strike during their imprisonment and served as a radiographer during the war. After her death in 1964, the students at the University of St. Andrews voted to rename a hall of residence after her; Agnes Blackadder Hall, commonly known as ABH, was the first at the university to be named after a woman. 

More recent female alumni of the university include artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, who received an honorary doctorate from the university, Catherine, the Princess of Wales, who graduated with and M.A in Art History in 2005, and Kate Holt, a photojournalist renowned for her work for humanitarian and development stories across Africa and the Middle East. Holt graduated from the university with an M.A in History in 1996, having spent her time at the St Andrews fundraising for an orphanage for disabled children in Romania which she had worked in prior to attending the university. Her effort received what she describes as “overwhelming support” from the student body and in her final year of study she was awarded a prize for her exceptional services with Romanian orphanages. Since graduating, Holt has been nominated three times for the Amnesty Award for Humanitarian reporting and her work regularly appears in papers such as the Guardian, the Telegraph, the BBC and the Times. 

It is thanks to the determination and courage of women such as Garrett and Blackadder to stand against the norm that has paved the way for our educational environment at St. Andrews today. Female students at the university are no longer barred from classes or forced to prove themselves exceptional against trends, indeed, now the trend has turned in favour of female majority. The university celebrates the achievements of women in academia and beyond through the St Andrews Institute for Gender Studies (S.T.A.I.G), which promotes gender studies across all fields of academic research and study, and numerous societies dedicated to female progression and achievement in the academic and working world. Be that as it may, female academics do not feel celebrated or equally valued at all levels with support dwindling the higher up the system women climb. The publication ‘Academic women here! On being a female academic at the University of St Andrews’  emphasises a need for support networks to challenge what Aileen Fyfe, Ineke De Moortel, and Sharon Ashbrook describe as “the occasional sense of isolation, the constant challenge of carving out time to maintain research capability and a healthy work/life balance” commonly felt by senior female academics. The pathway forged by previous female students at the university has brought about vast progress regarding women’s higher education and future prospects, however, today, more needs to be done to close the gender gap in research and leadership roles within the university by supporting the aspirations of potential and current female leaders within academia. 

• academia
• University of St Andrews
• women