Page 40 - Mansfield 2019/20

Celebrating women at Mansfield
Our College has a proud record of equality and inclusiveness, and this year we commemorated an important milestone in its development. Suzy Cripps (English, 2015) contemplates our women’s history.
The year 2020 marked the centenary of women gaining the right to matriculate and graduate from the University
of Oxford. At Mansfield too, we celebrated our own anniversary, with 2019/20 marking 40 years of mixed undergraduate cohorts.
Women had, in fact, been attending the College long before 1979. Revd Constance Coltman arrived to study for Christian ministry in 1913, and women ordinands made up a small minority of the Mansfield community for several decades before and after World War II – although there was a decline in numbers during the war years, due to the social upheaval of that time. A breakthrough moment came when the first female member of the SCR, Pamela Busby (now de Witt), arrived in 1971. She was followed by Janet Dyson in 1977, and of course, the 1979 undergraduate cohort.
In the midst of lockdown, we marked the occasion digitally, helped by our current students and alumni community. We created two resources which are available to view on our website. The first is a Brief History
of Mansfield’s Women (www.mansfield. ox.ac.uk/women-mansfield-brief-history),
a timeline commemorating some key moments in our women’s history, from 1913 to 2020; and the second is an informal Photographic History (www.mansfield. ox.ac.uk/photographic-history-mansfields- women-1979-2020): a scrapbook of memories from different generations of Mansfield’s women from 1979 onwards, which aims to recreate digitally the kind
of conversations that happen at reunions, swapping anecdotes and memories.
We were delighted by the enthusiastic response to these online resources, so as soon as lockdown permitted, we were keen to unveil our on-site commemorations.
On 7 October 2020 – exactly 100 years to the day since women were permitted to study at Oxford – we opened a bright and beautifully designed new exhibition celebrating Women of Mansfield.
The exhibition, which is on display at College for the entire academic year 2020/21 (situated along the corridor between the main entrance foyer and the Library), is a visual exploration of the history of women at Mansfield.
It commences with the arrival of the
pioneering first women for ministerial training, starting in 1913, and goes on to include the Bletchley Park women who worked at Mansfield as code-breakers during World War II.
As well as acknowledging our first mixed cohort of undergraduates, the exhibition incorporates a large display profiling all of our women Fellows, boldly leading the way in varied academic fields. The culmination of the exhibition is a lively celebration of all of the women of Mansfield today, including Honorary Fellows such as Dame Maggie Smith, Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton and Baroness Shami Chakrabarti.
This is an engaging and honest display which marks the real commitment at Mansfield to foster an inclusive community based on equality and respect. We’re proud that today Mansfield seeks to be a college that champions opportunity and access to academic excellence for all.
We would like to thank Jan Fischer (PPE, 1989), whose support enabled our
on-site exhibition. We are also indebted
to everyone whose contributions and research brought these projects to fruition.
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