On 12 January 2016, in front of a packed congregation in the Sheldonian Theatre, Professor Louise Richardson raised her right hand, undertook to observe the necessary ‘statutes, privileges, liberties, and customs’, and declared Do Fidem: ‘I give my word’.
Thus was she sworn in as Vice Chancellor of the University of Oxford, the 272nd person to hold that high office – and the first woman.
It had taken only eight centuries.
The origins of the University stretch so far back into the mists of time that no-one can say for sure when it was founded, but of one thing we can be certain: there were no female students. The University was an all-male, quasi-monastic institution, and remained so right up until the middle years of the nineteenth century.
Women were allowed to matriculate (ie to be formally admitted into the University) for the first time on 7 October 1920. Eleanor Jourdain, Principal of St Hugh’s College, described it as ‘a women’s day, and a day for women to remember’. Vera Brittain, one of those present, recalled the occasion as ‘tense with the consciousness of a dream fulfilled’. The first degree ceremony followed a week later (on the anniversary of the Battle of Hastings – a fact which seems to have gone unremarked).
One of the recipients who gathered in the Sheldonian Theatre on that momentous day in 1920 was Annie Rogers, a trailblazer in the campaign to admit women to the University. She finally got to graduate with honours (first class) in Latin, Greek, and Ancient History, having achieved top marks in the exams more than forty years earlier. Her autobiography relates a quiet but relentless battle to overcome prejudice and misogyny. It is entitled Degrees by Degrees.
She was one of a handful of determined and formidably intelligent women who had grudgingly been permitted to study (and sit for exams) at the University since the 1860s, attending ‘lectures for ladies’ and forming The Association for the Education of Women while residing in local family homes and polite lodgings or being accommodated in small halls of residence – Lady Margaret Hall (founded in 1878), Somerville Hall (1879), St Anne’s (also 1879; initially named The Society of Oxford Home-Students), St Hugh’s (1886) and St Hilda’s (1893).
In 1974, five all-male colleges voted to admit female undergraduates: Brasenose, Jesus, Wadham, Hertford, and St Catherine’s.
A decade later Oriel, the last bastion of male exclusivity, finally succumbed.
Meanwhile women’s colleges voted to admit men, the last being St Hilda’s in 2008. By 2018 more female than male undergraduates were being admitted to the University. In the following year Oxford appointed its first female Professor of Poetry, Alice Oswald. The first Chair of Women’s History was installed in 2021. Women even got to row on the River Thames on Boat Race day in 2015, after 88 years of aquatic segregation.
The roll-call of distinguished Oxford alumnae is remarkable. It includes: a prime minister of Pakistan (Benazir Bhutto); the first female prime minister of the UK (Margaret Thatcher née Roberts, who was notoriously refused an honorary degree by her alma mater); and, in 1964, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, for her pioneering use of X-ray crystallography to discover the structures of Vitamin B12, insulin, and penicillin.
Blue plaques celebrate the wider contribution of women to life in Oxford. There have been 26 to date, among them: the stablehand’s daughter and Pre-Raphaelite muse Jane Burden; Sarah Jane Cooper, creator of the world-famous marmalade (which bore her husband’s name); and Olive Gibbs, saviour of Jericho and twice Lord Mayor. In 2020 a plaque was unveiled at Annie Rogers’ house in St Giles to mark the centenary of degrees for women.
Plaques also commemorate people one might not ordinarily have heard of: Mary McMaster, physiotherapist and founder of St Luke’s Hospital, Headington; Isabelle Little, one of Oxford’s first female GPs and a pioneer in the field of family planning; Maureen Gardner, silver medallist sprint hurdler in the 1948 Olympics; Ivy Williams, the first woman to be called to the English Bar; and Joan Murray (née Clark), who helped crack the Enigma code and provided the inspiration for Keira Knightley’s character in The Imitation Game.
Let’s also hear it for Dame Sarah Gilbert DBE FRS, professor of vaccinology and head of the Jenner Institute. She is the only scientist, as far as we know, to have had a Barbie doll made in her honour, a tribute to her leading role in the race to develop the Oxford Astrazeneca COVID-19 vaccine, over three billion doses of which have been distributed worldwide.
And when it comes to female figures of legend, Oxford has more than a few: most famously Matilda, the queen who could not be captured; Rosamund the Fair, the tragic beauty who stole the heart of a king; and Anne Greene who was hanged at Oxford prison in 1650 but lived to tell the tale.
Presiding over all of them is our very own patron saint, St Frideswide, whose bones lie here in Oxford and whose spirit continues to reign over us – the city, the university, and the diocese of Oxford alike. A woman of indomitable conviction who refused to be cowed or intimidated; a kind and compassionate presence who used her gifts to heal the sick; an inspiration to monarchs and commoners alike; the woman who put Oxford on the pilgrimage map. It is she whom we celebrate today, as we take this opportunity to glorify her name.
Feedback
A ‘Non-Etonian’ writes:
The Oxford Union debating society didn’t admit women until 1963. Not as bad as the Oxford and Cambridge club in London, though, which didn’t admit women until 1996. The secretive and notoriously vandalistic Bullingdon Club (members of which include two recent Prime Ministers) still doesn’t admit women. I leave it to Morris Oxford readers to decide whether this constitutes the last bastion of Oxford misogyny?
Among her many remarkable talents, Annie Rogers was also a dedicated and knowledgeable horticulturalist. Upon her death in 1938, her colleagues, pupils and friends clubbed together to raise money for a commemorative stone bench to be placed in the churchyard on the north side of the University church. It is there to this day.
The Latin inscription states that Annie looked after flowers and gardens in her role as the first ‘Custos Hortulorum’ of St Hugh’s College. It is rumoured that the porters and staff of certain other colleges around the University used to look out for her on her travels, as she would sometimes take specimens from their garden and conceal them in her large umbrella, presumably to plant at St Hugh’s.
Dr Lorna Robinson, founder of the Cheney School Rumble Museum, writes:
In 2018, the Rumble Museum celebrated a year of workshops, talks, projects, and exhibitions in honour of the landmark centenary of women’s voting in Britain. We had been donated a number of very interesting artefacts from the suffrage movement, from membership cards and playing cards designed by the suffragettes, to anti-suffrage propaganda. The collection, which is prominently positioned right next to the Head’s office at the front of school, reminds us all of the importance of protest, and the ways in which society has shifted over time.
The students found the anti-suffrage postcards particularly fascinating, because the ideas behind them now seemed so ridiculous; but also, and perhaps just as powerfully, they noticed how so many of the tropes used to attack women – with the suffragettes being characterised as ‘ugly’, ‘unattractive’, and ‘domineering’ – are familiar to this day. Sadly, even a painting on the school wall has been defaced as if to make the point.
The Oxford Clarion, far and away the best news outlet in Oxfordshire, reported this significant if somewhat arcane linguistic intervention (9 May 2025):
Graduating Oxford students will henceforth be addressed as ‘Sodalis’ (member or fellow) rather than ‘Dominus’ (sir) following a vote on adopting Latin forms which are not ‘conspicuously gendered’. A Classics fellow explained that the replacement ‘has the same forms regardless of the gender of the individual’. An initial proposal had suggested removing the initial address entirely, but members of Congregation felt that they wanted to retain ‘the salutations that connote the respect shown by University officers to graduands in the course of the ceremony’. Professor Nicolai Sinai (Pembroke College) described the use of Latin as ‘charming linguistic cosplay that really needs to be taken with quite a few pinches of salt’, while Paul Elbourne (Magdalen College) worried that ‘hic adstantem’, meaning ‘standing here’, could be deemed exclusionary towards wheelchair users. The amendment to use ‘Sodalis’ was proposed by Tristan Franklinos, Lector in Greek & Latin, and seconded by the University’s Public Orator, Jonathan Katz. The amendment was carried 24–4 with the amended proposal carried 22–6.
Councillor Katherine Miles relates how it was the portraits on the walls of Oxford Town Hall which encouraged her to get involved in politics.
As I was watching the election count, I couldn’t help noticing the eyes gazing down on us from the portraits on the walls. The paintings were almost exclusively of men… The public space did not feel female-friendly. So, after my election in 2021, I tabled a question requesting data on the visual representation of women in the portraits in the town hall. It turned out that only 5 of the 45 portraits on display featured women. There was cross-party agreement that we needed to address this imbalance. A series of portrait photographs were commissioned and now sit proudly in the chamber. They include Cllr Merivale, the first female Councillor in Oxford and one of the first in the entire country, elected in 1907. [Recently honoured with a Blue Plaque. Ed]
Icolyn ‘Ma’ Smith opened the Oxford Community Soup Kitchen in 1989 since when it has fed more than 45,000 people. She was awarded an MBE in 2012.
Lubna Arshad made history in 2023 as the first Muslim woman, and the youngest Lord Mayor, to represent our city.
Lily Tawney was the first woman to be appointed Mayor of Oxford in 1933 having sat as a councillor since 1917. In office she was always addressed as ‘Mistress Mayor’.
Alice (‘Wonderland’) Liddell and her sisters should also receive an honourable mention. They are conjoined with St Frideswide in the following Story:
Julie Summers writes:
Inspiring, as ever. So great to read about these remarkable women. My great-grandmother studied Ancient Greek at Somerville in the 1880s and my grandmother read Chemistry at St Anne’s in the 1920s. She would have been entitled to a degree as she graduated in June 1924 but her husband forbade it. Sigh! He was not an enlightened man I’m afraid. Still, she was wonderful and so were all the women you mention.
All hail to Fran Monks for this superb portrait (taken in 2022) of all 14 female Heads of House, with Vice-Chancellor Louise Richardson in the middle. Since then the number has increased to 18 (out of 39 colleges) with Irene Tracey (also in the middle) as VC.
