Women at the University of Hong Kong, 1911-1995

Abstract

When the University of Hong Kong was founded in 1911 there was no expectation that women would ever be involved in the educational work of the institution, either as teachers or students. The first female students and teachers did not arrive until 1921, but their status within the University remained marginal until well after the Second World War. Rising numbers of female undergraduates from the 1950s and a growing cadre of women teachers (although generally working in junior teaching posts and subject to inferior terms of service) gradually altered the gender balance at HKU until women students were in the majority by the early 1990s and female academics began to challenge the predominantly male power structures of the institution. This lecture seeks to give an overview of the position of women at HKU during the University’s first eighty years, and explores the ways in which gender, race and class were formative influences in the perception of a woman’s place in Hong Kong’s post-war academic sector.