Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/1006

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Switzerland: Madam Gœgg.
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The striking success of university coëducation in Switzerland calls for a few words of notice. Mrs. Gœgg writes:

In October, 1872, I sent a petition to the grand-council of Geneva, asking that women be admitted to the university of Geneva on the same footing as men. The state of public opinion on this subject in Switzerland, and especially in Geneva, may be judged from the fact that, fearing to compromise the demand if I acted in my own name or that of the Solidarity, the petition was presented as coming from "the mothers of Geneva." Our prayer was granted.

The number of women who have pursued studies at Geneva has steadily increased every year. In 1878 the university of Nuefchatel was thrown open to women, while the university of Zurich has long had a large number of female students. Professor Pflüger, of the university of Bern, writing to me in April, 1883, said:

From February 2, 1876, to the present time, thirty-five women have taken degrees at our medical school. The lectures are attended each semister on an average by from twenty-five to thirty women, while from three to six follow the lectures on philosophy and letters. The presence of women at our university has occasioned no serious inconvenience and many colleagues favor it.

The rector of the university of Geneva wrote, February, 1883:

Up to the present time the attendance of women at our university has occasioned us no inconvenience except in some lectures of the medical school, where the subjects are not always of a nature to admit of their treatment before mixed classes.

We shall now glance at the situation of woman in the three Scandinavian countries, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Sweden stands first, just as Germany does among the Teutonic nations, and France among the Latin nations; in fact we may perhaps go farther and say that of all Continental States, Sweden leads in many respects at least, in the revolution in favor of women.

The State, the royal family, private individuals, and, above all, women themselves have all striven to outstrip each other in the emancipation of Swedish women. Normal schools, high schools, primary schools, the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, both at Stockholm, dairy schools and a host of other educational insitutions, both private and public, are thrown wide open to women. The State has founded scholar. ships for women at Upsala University and at the medical school of the university of Lund. Numerous benevolent, charitable and