Why go
A college visit can conceal how recently access changed. Seeing Somerville or Lady Margaret Hall alongside formerly male colleges gives a clearer sense of who could study, belong and graduate at different moments in Oxford’s history. The contrast is particularly clear when you compare their foundation and membership histories.
The full story
Campaigners for women’s higher education created opportunities in Oxford during the late nineteenth century. Lady Margaret Hall and Somerville opened in the late 1870s, followed by other women’s colleges. Their students studied in a university that still withheld full membership and degrees. During the First World War the position began to change, including new access to medical study and university responsibility for women’s examinations. In 1920 women became full members of the University of Oxford with the right to take degrees. That milestone did not end unequal limits. A quota introduced in 1927 restricted female student numbers until its abolition in 1957, and women’s colleges did not gain full collegiate status until 1959. Brasenose, Jesus, Wadham, Hertford and St Catherine’s were among the first previously all-male colleges to admit women in 1974. St Hilda’s admitted men in 2008, ending the remaining single-sex college model. These dates turn college names into evidence of change. They also explain why Oxford’s collegiate map contains institutions founded specifically to make women’s education possible, alongside older colleges whose membership changed much later.