Gender equality Swiss universities played a pioneering role in the education of women
Swiss universities were once leaders in the advancement of women. In the 19th century, women from all over the world came to Switzerland to study. However, most Swiss women were denied access to university for a long time.
08.03.2025, 09:01
SDA
In a book, the Geneva researcher Natalia Tikhonov described the integration of women into Swiss universities as a kind of contradictory avant-garde.
While special women's universities were created in many countries in the second half of the 19th century, Switzerland chose a different path. The University of Zurich accepted its first female students as early as the 1860s. Alongside the Sorbonne University in Paris, it was one of the first universities to open its doors to women. In 1867, the Russian Nadežda Suslova became the first woman to receive a doctorate in medicine in Zurich.
The University of Bern followed suit and admitted its first regular female student in 1872. The University of Geneva opened its doors to women when it was founded in 1872 after a petition was submitted by Geneva mothers. The universities of Lausanne and Neuchâtel also followed suit. The universities of Basel and Fribourg, on the other hand, were more reluctant to admit women. Basel admitted women for the first time in 1890, Fribourg only followed suit in 1905.
Hardly possible for Swiss women
Swiss universities quickly attracted young women from wealthy families in Europe and Russia. As a result, Switzerland became a popular place to study for foreign women, and the number of female students increased dramatically. In 1906, a quarter of students were women.
Over 90 percent of women at Swiss universities at this time were foreigners. This was because most Swiss women did not meet the admission requirements. One of the admission requirements was attendance at a grammar school. Girls' schools in Switzerland did not offer this. In order to be admitted to university, they had to attend expensive private courses and take entrance exams. The number of Swiss female students therefore remained extremely low for a long time.
A large proportion of the women at Swiss universities came from Russia. In the second half of the 19th century, the Russian women's movement had campaigned for more educational opportunities for women, and girls' grammar schools were established. However, after student unrest at St. Petersburg University in 1863, women were barred from studying there. Many therefore moved to Switzerland.
Preference for foreign women
According to Tikhonov, this ambivalent situation continued until the first decades of the 20th century, when several grammar schools in German-speaking Switzerland were opened to girls and girls' schools in French-speaking Switzerland began to adapt their curricula to those of boys.
"Paradoxically, the same university authorities placed far less stringent requirements on young women with a migration background," wrote researcher Tikhonov. Their high school diplomas were accepted without additional exams and without the formal requirement to know Latin at the time of admission.
