Most of the women students in British Universities are intending to earn their living; the exceptions being a few at Oxford and Cambridge. The careers most fully open to them are teaching and medicine, for which full professional training is provided in the Universities. A large army of women graduates is employed in the Secondary Schools, and many women doctors hold positions in hospitals, especially in those for women and children, or carry on private practice. Pharmacy is chosen as an occupation by many women, and in dentistry there is plenty of room—though very few women enter upon it.
Students showing marked talent fairly often obtain grants enabling them to prosecute research for a year or two; a few private commercial firms employ research workers and occasionally engage a woman; but the opportunities of this kind are comparatively rare. A certain number of women in practically every University now hold positions as Demonstrators in laboratories, or as Assistant Lecturers or Lecturers; a very few are Professors. Some are employed as lecturers under organisations for extending advanced teaching outside the Universities.[5]
[5] Such are the Workers' Educational Association, and the various University Extension Schemes.
In the Civil Service (which is the general name for the various departments of work under the Government), University women are employed in some numbers under the Board of Education, the Home Office, the Ministry of Health and the Local Government Board, as Inspectors and Medical Officers. The Ministry of Labour and the Post Office, while employing large numbers of women, offer very few posts suitable for University graduates. During the war many women held in Government offices positions of importance and responsibility; but most of them have now been dispensed with under the plea of economy, or of providing employment for discharged soldiers. A very few of these women, however, still retain their posts, and there is a fairly powerful movement for opening the higher positions in the Civil Service to women. Hitherto all women employed have been engaged by individual selection; it is now proposed that after three years from 1921, they shall be eligible to compete for posts in the same examinations as men, though power is to be retained to appoint to any given post either a man or a woman, as may seem best, from among the successful candidates. It remains to be seen to what extent this provision may be used to nullify the chances of women. There is powerful opposition in many Government departments; but the Treasury is said to be favourable to the gradual introduction of women in higher administrative positions. At present, such openings for them are few. It is not at present even proposed to open to them positions in diplomacy or in the consulate.
A considerable number of educated women find administrative positions as Heads of University Colleges, Halls of Residence, and Training Colleges for Teachers. Some of the older Training Colleges are still presided over by men as Principals; but it is the policy of the Board of Education to replace these upon retirement by women. All Heads and Assistants in Elementary and Secondary Schools for girls only are women; but in schools open to both boys and girls, it is customary to appoint a man as Head, with or without a senior woman in special charge of the girls. In Scotland it is still common for a girls' school to have a Headmaster.
Secretarial work is a career coveted by many University graduates unwilling to enter upon the occupation of teaching. The Universities do not, however, provide a professional training for this; nor are the openings suited for University women very numerous. Some occasionally find congenial posts as foreign correspondents in banks and commercial firms; many become organising secretaries for philanthropic or kindred organisations; a favoured few become private secretaries to literary, scientific, or political personages. The demand, however, for secretaries of University education is not at this moment equal to the supply.
The Church offers at present very little scope for women: except in one or two of the free sects, the ministry is not open to them. The Law has only within the last year or two been opened to them.
Librarianship offers a very limited number of opportunities. Some College and University libraries employ a few women in comparatively subordinate positions; the ordinary City Library does not offer any opening to women of University education. An attempt has recently been made to provide a professional training for Librarians, following the example set long ago by the United States; but for women the prospects seem at present precarious.
Home Economics and Domestic Science being (with the exception noted above) still outside the purview of the Universities, practically no University women are qualified to undertake posts either as teachers or as practical workers in this sphere. There is, however, a very large demand for highly qualified Institutional Managers, Matrons, Superintendents, etc., and good salaries can be earned in such positions. It is to be hoped that with the return of better financial prospects in the Universities, advanced training in work of this kind, eminently suitable for educated women, may be undertaken.
It will be seen that, though many careers are open to University women, the prizes are few; and in very many of these careers the openings are so rare, or the initial income offered so low, that only those who are adventurous or independent financially, can afford to run the risk involved in choosing them. By far the most usual occupation for them, apart from medicine, is the profession of teaching; although it is now by no means, as at one time, the only avenue open. During the war, women teachers entered boys' schools in considerable numbers, but, except for quite young boys, few of these are now retained. Upon the whole, the outlook is discouraging to those who looked for a permanent increase in the number of openings for women as a result of women's varied services in the war. Only a few positions of importance have been retained, and throughout the whole field of labour women have lost the greater part of the advance made. All that seems to be definitely gained at present is the breaking down of the bar of absolute exclusion.