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University women
11 July 2009
The Australian Federation of University Women (AFUW) Sunshine Coast Branch held their annual bursary presentation breakfast at the University last Saturday.
The AFUW is a non-profit organisation working to promote lifelong education to improve the status of women and girls and to enable women to effect positive change for a peaceful, sustainable future. Female university graduates from any country are eligible to join and the members present at this function reflected a broad spread of countries and universities, including USC graduates.
The AFUW do a terrific job in supporting USC and the region as a whole. One of the services they provide is the gown hire for graduation ceremonies and the proceeds of such events support the bursary program. This year five bursaries were presented to outstanding students.
As is the case each year, the recipients were a wonderful set of young people.
Each had her story to tell and from each of them there was a refreshing enthusiasm for their chosen field of study and their educational journey at the University. The confidence of these individuals and their determination to make a difference through their chosen career paths was really quite remarkable.
However, the lot of women within the university sector has not always been so positive. European universities didn’t accept women at all until the middle of the 19th Century and even then it was not full acceptance.
In many cases, for example, while they could attend lectures (with special permission), they were not allowed to take out degrees. At this time of course, women didn’t have the vote and didn’t have access to what we would now consider to be basic civil rights.
The University of Adelaide is credited with being the first Australian university to enroll women to academic courses in 1881. It’s interesting to note that South Australian women were also the first to get the vote, in 1894.
From here, the engagement of women with higher education has witnessed some ups and downs but mainly progress.
By 1910 about 20% of Australian university students were female and by 1920 it had grown to nearly 30%. The trend was stable or downward during the years between 1930 and 1950 but bounced back during the 1950s and by the mid-1980s women were in the majority at university.
The most recent data indicate that nationally, around 57% of students are female, although the gender balance between different discipline areas varies considerably. For example, disciplines like engineering are dominated by men while others, like nursing are dominated by women.
At USC there has been a consistent pattern of higher enrolments by women. In 2003, 57% of our students were women and this has grown steadily through 59% in 2006 to 64% of students in 2009.
In the bigger degree programs with 100+ students, areas like nursing, education, psychology and nutrition and dietetics all have 80+% women students. The ratio is more balanced in areas like business, accounting, science, science teaching and paramedic science.
In the larger degree programs at USC, sport and exercise science has the highest representation by men. Seventy per cent of students are male.
To date, 56% of our graduates have been women and based on this information this proportion will continue to grow steadily in the years ahead. This, of course, should be good news for the Australian Federation of University Women.
Professor Greg Hill is Acting Vice-Chancellor and President at the University of the Sunshine Coast.