Education and Citizen’s Rights

In 1850 the letter novel ‘Clara Raphael - 12 letters’ was published, written by 19 year old private teacher Mathilde Fibiger. The novel questioned women’s position in society.

For the first time in recent history women’s liberation was put on the public agenda in Denmark.

The novel caused scandal and much debate. School principal Pauline Worm, who was four years older, entered into the debate with a demand that women should be given the same possibilities in the educational system as men. Only that way would women be able to obtain more equal terms on the labour market and in society. The ensuing debate provoked a clash with the traditional upbringing of women, which focused solely on giving a woman the skills needed and expected of her to fulfill her future role as wife and mother.

The Danish Women’s Society, founded in 1871, was particularly active in the struggle to improve women’s educational and financial position. In 1872 they started the Business School for Women, in 1874 the Sunday School for the Working and Serving Classes and in 1875 the Art School for Women.

During the last decades of the 19th century the educational system gradually opened up. In 1875 women gained access to the universities and in 1893 to the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. But this access was for a minority only. Girls did not obtain access to public high schools until the new school law of 1903 was passed.

Other opportunities for education arose during the last half of the 19th century as well. In the 1860s an examination for female teachers was introduced. With this education women had the opportunity of employment as teachers at public schools. Nursing, which had thus far been based on voluntary workers, became a profession in 1875. This education made nursing a well-respected  livelihood for unmarried women.

In 1902 Magdalene Lauridsen started the first Danish Teacher’s College of Home Economics. With an education as teacher of home economics women could apply for jobs with the many schools of home economics and night schools, which in the early decades of the 20th century were founded all over the country with the purpose of teaching home economics to adult women.

The years just before the end of the 19th century saw the founding of several societies with the demand for the right to  vote and eligibility for women on their agendas.

Their joint efforts led to municipal right to vote  for women in 1908 and the national right to vote in 1915, which was celebrated on Constitution Day, June 5 1915, when 10-12,000 women gathered in a march on the Parliament.

The march was testimony that women appreciated the citizen’s right, as men from all political parties had agreed to no longer exclude them. But at the same time the women stressed that they were not saying ‘Thank you’ for this universal citizen’s right.