Some room for us: Women in academia as seen through the lives of Canada’s Eliza Ritchie (1856-1933) and Spain’s María Goyri (1873-1954)

Allyson Jule,Sara Herrero

doi:10.5209/hics.75710

Abstract

This paper explores the experience of women in academia by looking both back and at the present. We consider two women who searched for and found academic accomplishment. Together, they serve as representatives of a new way of living for women in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Eliza Ritchie (1856-1933) from Canada and María Goyri (1873-1954) from Spain are exemplars of the emerging contributions of women in the academy as part of the changing role for women in Western culture and the need for women to support each other in shared feminist causes. These women shared the same time period, the same intellectual values, the same commitment to scholarship, and the same incredible determination to help develop a modern society that could embrace the full incorporation of women. This paper considers their accomplishments in light of academia today in both Canada and Spain in regards to the advancement of women. It also examines some lingering inequalities in terms of tenure and promotion, salary, research capacity, administrative and leadership positions. Such an international collaboration contributes to the shared sense of sisterhood for women in academia today.

Highlights

Today’s academic women face many of the same burdens as men: the pressures of tenure and promotion, the demands of teaching and writing, the requirements to serve on university committees and academic associations, as well as the need to manage and tend to one’s personal life
The gender gap cuts across national and international boundaries; evidence of it has been found over many decades in all Western academic systems (Baker, 2012, Gómez, 2016)
Much feminist literature shows particular experiences of women within academia in Western countries through a reflexive life story approach (Baker, 2012; Rogers, 2017). We use this approach in this comparative analysis that sheds light on the shared feminist history of academic women

Summary

Universidad Europea de Madrid

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5174-6898 2 Trinity Western University, Vancouver, BC, Canadá. Long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. – Virginia Woolf, A room of one’s own (1929) Long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. – Virginia Woolf, A room of one’s own (1929)

Introduction

Ritchie and Goyri comparative analysis

Women in the academia today

Findings

Some Conclusions