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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2023
The National Association for the Promotion of Social Science held its first London meeting in June, 1862, and devoted one of its sessions to a discussion of the expediency of granting degrees at the universities to women. William Shaen moved that the Council of the Association
. . . should represent to the Senate of the University of London the desirableness of their undertaking the duty of affording women an opportunity of testing their attainments in the more solid branches of learning.
Shaen added to his analysis of the recent voting in Senate. He and Foster focussed on the importance of Convocation for the future of the question. Shaen declared that
. . . though the Senate, and not the Convocation, is the governing body, still the Senate would not force female graduates upon the others, in opposition to the wishes of Convocation; and, on the other hand, there could be no doubt, that when Convocation made up its mind that degrees shall be thrown open to women, the Senate would be of the same opinion.
Foster had no doubt as to where pressure had to be exerted: ‘the most advantageous mode would be to attack the Convocation, and leave the Senate till the Convocation was won’.
But the discussion underlined what had become a widespread uncertainty, among those sympathetic to the cause of female enrolment, as to whether or not ‘the same training and discipline should be applied to men and to women’. Foster himself claimed that
The ladies who desired to be admitted to the universities did not want to take the same degrees as were given to men, but they wanted some competent authority to say, that they have acquirements equal to those for which the degrees were given: that the degree of proficiency was the same, whether by the same mark or by any other.
Another speaker interpreted the Senate’s debate as having taken this aspect of the matter into account:
The issue presented to the Senate was the identity of a long protracted scheme of education for men and for women.
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