University

Women were neither students nor professors in universities for many centuries. This was probably not the result of a conscious decision to exclude them, but the logical consequence of the view that universities prepared students for public careers and professions that women traditionally did not enter or from which they were barred. The path toward acceptance of women in universities was long and slow. The first woman to obtain a university degree was Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia (1646–1684), a Venetian noblewoman, who received a doctorate of philosophy from the University of Padua on 25 June 1678. She did not attend lectures but obtained the degree through examination, an accepted practice in Italian universities. The second was Laura Bassi (1711–1778), a highborn Bolognese woman who obtained a doctorate of philosophy, again through examination, from the University of Bologna on 12 May 1732. She was the first female professor, as she taught experimental science at the University of Bologna from 1732 to 1738. The third was Maria Pellegrina Amoretti, who earned a doctorate in law from the University of Pavia on 25 June 1777.

From 1800 through 1945 more women, although still a small minority, attended university and earned degrees. Because many universities did not accept women as students, undergraduate colleges for women were founded, as well as new colleges and universities that admitted both men and women, especially in the United States. This changed greatly in the last thirty years of the twentieth century. Nearly all male-only colleges and universities in the United States accepted women as students, and a majority of women-only institutions enrolled men. But except for traditional female-dominated professions, such as nursing, only a few women were university professors in Europe and North America as late as the 1960s. Then, in response to larger societal moves to provide equal rights and opportunities for women, the barriers became lower or disappeared. By the twenty-first century women constituted the majority of undergraduates in American universities and about half of the students in law and medical schools. The number of women professors has increased greatly, although their distribution by fields varies. European universities also saw an expansion in the number of female students and professors, although the number of female faculty members varies considerably from country to country.

The idea of a university that offers education to students and supports advanced research by professors has proven to be one of the most enduring and influential ideas in Western civilization.