This is the reason why we have just said that the opening of all hospital opportunities to women on equal terms with men is yet more imperative to-day than it was when Dr. Zakrzewska made such valiant battle for her sisters.
At the same time, when women seem to have attained opportunities, they still find it necessary to remember Dr. Zakrzewska’s distrust and fear of beguilement, to remain on guard and to take all possible steps to keep secure all that has been so painfully achieved.
Even among nonmedical students and in circles that are supposed to be the most broadly educated, here and there the tolerances and amenities of civilized life develop slowly. Thus as late as October 20, 1921, the students of the University of Cambridge (England) express their disapproval of even “limited membership” for women by the old, worn-out methods of mobbing and rioting—battering down and smashing the valuable memorial gates of the women’s college, Newnham. The arrival of the police prevented their further progress there, but at Peile Hall, they reached the doors and tried to force entrance into the college itself, which further outrage was again prevented by the police.[28]
In 1922 the London Hospital decided to exclude women from the classes and services to which they had been admitted since 1908. The story has a familiar sound—“... the chairman emphasizes the fact that the step has not been brought about by any failure of the women students ... who have done very well in every way, in work, in conduct, and in discipline.”[29]
Notwithstanding all the handicaps imposed on woman, she has demonstrated that “science has no sex.” Do not her opponents now need to demonstrate that they themselves are worthy followers of science by accepting truth wherever it may be found and by rendering impartial justice to every one?
As some of these pages are being written (June 21, 1921), Madame Marie Curie is in Boston.
The morning papers report that she was yesterday given a reception by Harvard University. President Lowell presided, and in his address he ranked Madame Curie with “Sir Isaac Newton and other epoch-making discoverers.” He then introduced Professor Richards of the Department of Chemistry, who said, “The discovery of Madame Curie gave the world new ideas concerning the structure of the universe, and opened a new path of thought to scientists.”
The highest mark of distinction which a college or university can bestow upon a person whom it desires to honor is an honorary degree. At its Commencement, three days later, Harvard did not confer an honorary degree on Madame Curie. Would it have conferred one on Sir Isaac Newton?
Is scholarship, then, the ideal of a college or university? Or is it scholarship which happens to be attained by a sex?
But humanity is neither male nor female: it is both. And both possess all human faculties plus the specialized qualities of the sex of the individual. The nonrecognition of this basic fact impedes the progress of the race. And the subjection of either sex to the other impedes both.