Table of contents
Social expectations
The society gradually began to accept women’s academic and professional aspirations. However, only with respect to unmarried women. The situation radically changed after a woman became a wife.
It was thought that women should give priority to the family and taking care of the children. Husband’s professional aspirations took precedence. Women were expected to subordinate their own plans to them.
These social expectations were sometimes even regulated by the law. For example, many professions employed the ‘celibacy clause’ which required women to give up their professional careers upon marriage.
Women working at universities had to face these social expectations. Without a doubt, the support of the family and relatives helped. The protagonists of our exhibition could count on their relatives and friends. However, not always were they able to combine their academic careers with other social roles. The breaks in the careers of some of them, which resulted from the need to take care of their loved ones, prove that. It is telling that only one out of eleven women presented at the exhibition, Zofia Małaczyńska-Sulchcitzowa, became a mother.
Social attitudes
For a very long time Polish academia and social activists were divided when it came to the issue of equal rights for women.
Higher education and professional careers for women were often presented as a real threat to the functioning and integrity of a family. Superstitions about the inferiority of the female mind were also widespread. It was thought that because of that women would not be able to carry out research.
Besides, many representatives of the landed gentry and intelligentsia thought that educating girls at universities was not advisable. They feared that universities would corrupt them.
Over time, however, education and opening universities to women gained more and more supporters. At the beginning of the academic year 1897-1898 the rector of the Jagiellonian University, Father Władysław Knapiński, welcomed the first female students saying: ‘This year will be a memorable era in the history of the University. Because for the first time its threshold is crossed by women. Ladies, I am very glad that I can welcome you here! You are to be congratulated on gaining the right that your peers in other places can already enjoy.’