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Nigella Lawson, the journalist Samira Ahmed, Malala Yousafzai and the UK's two female Prime Ministers all have one institution in common - the University of Oxford.

But it wasn't always a given that students like Theresa May and Margaret Thatcher would end their years of study with a degree in their chosen subject.

In 2020, the University of Oxford - the oldest in the English-speaking world - marks the centenary of allowing women to be full students. Although they could attend studies for more than 40 years prior to this, they were unable to officially enrol or graduate.

In the hundred years since then, there has been much change. We spoke with Janet Howarth, emeritus fellow of St Hilda’s College at Oxford, who told us how life for women at Oxford developed over time, a story that begins in the late 19th Century.

Nineteenth Century pioneers

Mrs Howarth said: “I think we have to remember how very different the world was in those days, how difficult it was to get into universities at all. The first university to admit women [as full students] was University College in London and that wasn’t until 1878.”

Around 4,000 women studied at Oxford before 1920. The first female students came to Oxford in 1879, with the opening of Lady Margaret Hall - the first of the university's higher education institutions for women, and Somerville Hall, named after the mathematician Mary Somerville.

Among them were Eleanor Rathbone, a future independent MP and women’s rights campaigner. Gertrude Bell, born in 1868, was the daughter of an industrialist, studied History at Oxford and went on to be an explorer and valued diplomat in the Middle East. Constance Coltman, one of the first women ordained as a Christian minister in Britain, studied Divinity at Mansfield College before officially joining the church in 1917.

Cambridge University didn’t allow its female students to graduate at the same time as Oxford. Women there would be awarded degrees from 1948.

The Steamboat Ladies

There was one way for the female students around Oxford and Cambridge to get a degree prior to 1920. They could travel to Trinity College in Dublin to receive their qualifications instead.

This was due to an arrangement between the three universities, which allowed their members to graduate from each other with an equivalent degree. Trinity allowed female graduates in arts and medicine from 1904, providing a welcome loophole for the women students in the south of England.

Between 1904 and 1907, when the arrangement came to an end, more than 700 women who had studied at Oxford and Cambridge paid the fee (more than £10, the equivalent of around £1,200 today) to make the trip to claim their degrees in Dublin. It earned them the nickname The Steamboat Ladies in the process.

Degree status was also a boost for women who wanted to go into teaching. Without graduating, they were unable to wear the academic dress recognisable for teachers of that time, including the mortar board and gown.

Votes before degrees

When women were given full student status, it was at a time when they were still unable to vote - it would be 1928 when years of campaigning would result in women over the age of 21 getting to vote in elections. Eleanor Rathbone was among those who campaigned for women’s suffrage and Mrs Howarth told Bitesize that this issue may have been more pressing for women than the right to graduate.

She said: “Sexism then was much more pronounced than anything we expect today… In the early 20th Century, [women] didn’t have equal civil rights. The ones who were at Oxford and Cambridge in the 1900s were much more up in arms about the vote than getting access to degrees, that was what they marched for.”

Quota, un-quota

Not long after women started as full students at Oxford, they also had to contend with a quota system, imposed in 1927. In its first year of operation, no more than 840 women could be admitted to study there. The figure was raised to 940 in 1948 and abandoned altogether in 1957.

Mrs Howarth explained: “It’s an aspect of why Oxford and Cambridge were wary of admitting women… women were just seen as another claim on very scarce resources.” With no public funding, much of the private investment at Oxford revolved around the all-male colleges, which had established connections in different businesses and industries.

In 1974, five of the previously all-male colleges began admitting female students. Other changes included Oxford Union debating society allowing women to become full members. As the male and female students began to integrate more, other bonuses came to light too.

Mrs Howarth said: “Women’s sport was boosted by the mixed colleges. For example, access to the boathouse for a women’s rowing team.”

Forging relationships

Another aspect of allowing female students into a previously all-male environment, and later have them studying together, is the possibility of romance blossoming.

Conditions were, however, imposed regarding these situations from the start.

Mrs Howarth said: “Relationships between the sexes at university was very different, very restricted… there was still a certain sort of freedom you didn’t have at home, your own room and your own friends, for example.

“But a woman couldn’t go to tea, or go on the river, or got to the theatre with a man unless another woman was with them. It was called The Two Woman Rule, although it was an improvement on having a senior woman with you!”

After 100 years, there are still barriers that continue to break.

In 2016, Professor Louise Richardson became the first woman to hold the post of Vice-Chancellor. And, in 2020, Baroness Valerie Amos became the first black woman to become head of an Oxford college, when she took over as Master of University College.

Two significant achievements that the female students of the 1870s could perhaps only dream about.