The project

The “Womens University” research project focuses on women’s path to higher education in the 20th and 21st centuries, and on how the increasingly academic nature of vocational training courses has proved to be a stepping-stone along this path for women in Denmark. The research project adopts a historical perspective in considering the fact that women now constitute a majority of the students at Danish universities, and the fact that women in Denmark achieve a higher level of education than men.

This historical perspective is unfolded in two projects: a study of developments since the 1990s, involving the introduction of professional Bachelor’s degree programmes; and a study of selected vocational training courses at Aarhus University from the years around World War II. These studies place the focus on women’s educational strategies, experiences and memories.

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The project partners     

• Bente Rosenbeck, Professor Emerita, Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics, University of Copenhagen
• Harriet Bjerrum Nielsen, Professor Emerita, Centre for Gender Research, Oslo University
• Joyce Goodman, Professor of History of Education, University of Winchester
• Maria Tamboukou, Professor in Feminist Studies, University of East London
• Christian Larsen, Senior Researcher, Danish National Archives
• Hanne Caspersen, graduate in History and Danish, and censor chairman 2012-2022
• Susanne Malchau Dietz, Nurse Historian, PhD and freelance writer