Timeline of Women at U.Va.

1892 Caroline Preston Davis applies for permission to take the examination for a B.A. in mathematics. Davis passes the exam and is awarded a “certificate of proficiency” instead of a degree.

1894 Addis M. Meade receives a master’s degree in mathematics. Later that year, the faculty and Board of Visitors vote against admitting women under any conditions.

1901 Women are admitted to two-year nursing diploma program at U.Va hospital.

1910 Mary Cooke-Branch Munford presses the Virginia General Assembly to establish a co-ordinate women’s college in Charlottesville. U.Va faculty endorse the bill in 1911.

1916 A bill to establish a co-ordinate women’s college in Charlottesville passes the state Senate, but fails in the House by two votes.

1920 The General Assembly decides to admit women to graduate and professional programs at U.Va. Seventeen women enroll at U.Va in the fall of 1920.

1926 U.Va receives $50,000 from the Graduate Nurses’ Association for the establishment of a School of Nursing.

1930 Several faculty wives and daughters are accepted in the College.

1935 Alice Jackson, an African-American female, focuses national attention on U.Va.’s discriminatory admission policies when she applies to the school.
1944 Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg becomes affiliated with U.Va. as a “co-ordinate school” for women.

1967 President Edgar F. Shannon Jr. appoints a University committee to consider the need for the admission of women to the College of Arts and Sciences.

1968 The committee concludes that the existing arrangement “unfairly discriminates against women” and comes out in support of their admittance.

1969 The committee finds that U.Va. is the only U.S. state university that, by not opening its main campus college to women, forces them to attend a separate college 65 miles away. The Honor Committee, however, concludes in a study that “coeducation will hurt the Honor System, and thus should not be recommended.” The Board of Visitors drops its ban against women in the College. U.Va. adopts a policy of voluntary “gradualism,” and declares, as a first step, that it will accept student and faculty members’ wives and daughters.

1969-70 U.Va. alumnus John Lowe initiates ACLU lawsuit against U.Va. U.S. Circuit Court panel requires U.Va. to consider the application of Virginia Scott and to phase in coeducation over two years.

1970 The first class of 450 undergraduate women enters U.Va. (39 percent). The number of men admitted remains constant.

2003 Women comprise 55 percent
of the undergraduate student body.

Sources include: Alumni News, Office of Admissions, Women's Center,