![]() This archive unlocks a story spanning 100 years, beginning with a quiet revolution, then resilience in times of discrimination, coping during the Emergency years and finally breaking the mould to bring about real change and equality for women. ![]() The TWG Archive is a priceless collection of correspondence and documents written and preserved throughout the last 100 years by Trinity women graduates. Money deriving from the degree conferral fees that female graduates paid during this period were largely used to fund the purchase of Trinity Hall, an extramural hall of residence for female students, which opened in 1908. All had passed examinations at Oxbridge that would have earned them a degree if they were male.The women were predominately students of Girton and Newnham Colleges Cambridge and Somerville College, Oxford. ![]() In fact, by 1907 Trinity had granted degrees to some 720 "steamboat ladies". The Board of Trinity College thought that only small numbers of women would take up the offer to graduate and that they would be Irish women who had studied in Oxford or Cambridge colleges. "Steamboat ladies" was a nickname given to a number of female students at the women's colleges of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge who were awarded ad eundem University of Dublin degrees at Trinity College Dublin, between 19, at a time when their own universities refused to confer degrees upon women.The name comes from the means of transport commonly used by these women to travel to Dublin for this purpose. In accordance with the long-standing formula of ad eundem mutual recognition that existed between Dublin, Oxford and Cambridge, the Provost of Trinity College proposed that eligible female Oxbridge course completers be granted Trinity degrees, as was the case for men. Unlike Oxford and Cambridge, where women had for some years been admitted to separate female colleges within the overall university, both men and women would be admitted to the University of Dublin's only college (Trinity) and it was felt there would be no rationale to restrict successful female students from graduating to become members of the university, like their male counterparts. Trinity opened its doors to female students in 1904. Lively memoirs and reminiscences of women graduates, collected by the TWG, combine with academic essays, to tell the fascinating story of one hundred years of women in Trinity and the influence of the women graduates on Trinity and Irish society. The TWG Archive traces the long campaign for admission, the achievements of early women graduates and the struggle for equality by female students and staff. However, even in the 1960s, women students were still refused campus accommodation, had to leave Trinity by six o’clock and dine separately – all because their presence was judged to be ‘a danger to the men’. Despite on-going opposition to the higher education of women, in 1904 Trinity College became the first of the historic universities of Ireland and Britain to admit women to degrees.Ī century later, sixty per cent of the student body is female. In 1892, this bar was challenged head-on when ten thousand Irish women signed a petition demanding its abolition. The Trinity Women Graduates Association (TWG), formerly DUWGA, is one of the oldest Associations in Trinity, founded in 1922 and celebrating its centenary in 2022.įor over three hundred years, Trinity College Dublin refused entry to women. ![]()
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