Women Workers in Seven Professions by Edith J. Morley
page 31 of 336 (09%)
page 31 of 336 (09%)
|
themselves for the higher university appointments. At almost all the
new Universities men and women are nominally alike eligible for every teaching post. In practice, women are rarely if ever selected for the higher positions. Sex prejudice undoubtedly counts for something in this result. It may be assumed that, with two candidates of equal merit, preference will certainly be given to the man: indeed, it is certain that a woman must be exceptionally qualified and far more distinguished than her male competitors to stand a chance of a professorial appointment even in the most liberal of co-education universities--Manchester, for example, where the conditions are exceptionally good. This fact should not deter _fully qualified_ women from applying for professorial chairs. The power of suggestion is very great, and it is well to accustom appointment committees to the consideration of women's claims: in time it may appear less strange to choose a strong woman candidate than to reject her in favour of a less qualified male applicant. It must be confessed, however, that the case does not at present often arise. The girl who has had a brilliant undergraduate career, and who has real capacity for advanced study, exists in her hundreds. But in almost every case when she is not financially independent, at best after an interval of preparation for her M.A., she accepts a junior lectureship or demonstratorship, and from that time onwards is swallowed up in the vortex of teaching and routine work. Often she makes heroic efforts and succeeds in producing independent results, but, so far, to nothing like the extent that would be commensurate with the promise of her undergraduate achievement. Generally she is too conscientious about detail, too interested in her students individually and collectively, to secure sufficient time for her own studies. |
|