Women in psychiatry

Abstract

Borrowing books was a privilege introduced for women by several academic institutions and libraries in England in the 19th century. Cambridge University accepted women on equal terms with men in 1948. Various objectors before that feared that higher education would have untoward effects on women's bodies and minds. The eminent 19th-century psychiatrist Henry Maudsley was convinced it would make them infertile (Robinson, 2009). Yet women played an important role in the founding of many Islamic educational institutions from the first millennium, and Christian religious orders fostered education for girls and women in Europe before the modern era.