Portraying Lives: Headmistresses and Women Professors 1880s-1940s

The expansion of women’s higher education in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Australia and New Zealand offered educated women opportunities to broaden their aspirations, horizons and experiences across many professional fields. Engaged in the public activity of teaching in a range of educational institutions, women were able to exercise a level of professional expertise, authority and independence. Paradoxically, women were both empowered by the possibilities of educational career...