(2) Professorial posts and Staff Lectureships.[4] These are almost entirely confined to Women's Colleges, though there are a very few exceptions to this rule. The University of London has established University Professorships and Readerships at the various constituent Women's Colleges.[5] One of the former and several of the latter are held by women who have been appointed after open competition. In addition, a woman, Mrs Knowles, holds a University Readership at the co-educational London School of Economics. There are also one or two women professors at the newer Universities, but these as a rule retain their positions by right of past service in a struggling institution, not as a result of open competition, when University status had been attained and reasonable stipends were offered to new-comers. The National University of Ireland has, however, appointed several women professors at its various constituent Colleges.
Salaries probably range from £300 to £700, the better paid posts as yet very seldom falling to women.
(3) Lectureships, assistant lectureships, and demonstratorships. These are usually open to women in practice as well as in theory, though much depends on the personal idiosyncrasy of the head of the department, and on the importance of the post and the salary offered. But since it is, unhappily, often easy to secure an able woman for the same stipend as that which must be offered to an inexperienced man, fresh from college, difficulties are not, as a rule, placed in the way of such appointments. The salary begins at about £150 (sometimes less), and rises normally to about £200 or £250. A few senior and independent lectureships are better remunerated.
(4) Closely allied with University work is the work of training teachers. In Training-Colleges, and in University training-departments there is a constant demand for lecturers and mistresses of method. These posts, which are remunerated on about the same scale as other University lectureships, are well suited to those whose interest lies mainly in purely educational matters. Girls who have obtained good degrees, but who do not wish to devote themselves entirely to scholarship, will find here an attractive and ever-extending sphere of influence. Lecturers in Training-Colleges must, of course, themselves hold a University teaching-diploma: they should have school experience of various kinds, and they must be enthusiastic in the cause of training and of teaching. For competent and broad-minded women there are many openings in this branch of the profession, and there is much scope for independent and original work in many directions. The training of teachers, as well as actual teaching, is of the nature of scientific, experimental, and observational work. Lecturers in Training-Colleges most of all, but to a large extent teachers of every degree, must be students of psychology and of human nature. Mistresses of Method are well aware that the ideal type of training has not yet been evolved: they are seeking new ways of carrying on their work and experimenting with new methods at the same time as they are guiding others along paths already familiar to themselves. This absence of finality, characteristic of the teaching profession as a whole, and constituting one of its chief attractions, is especially noticeable in all work connected with the training of teachers.
Senior appointments at all properly constituted Universities are of life tenure—nominally until the age of sixty-five, though probably earlier retirement will be made possible. They are made by the Council, which usually entrusts the election either to the Senate or to a committee, on which are representatives of both the Council and the Senate. Unfortunately this procedure is not universal, and the teachers are not invariably consulted in their official capacity. Junior appointments, while subject to ratification by the Council, are usually made in the first instance by the head of the department concerned, usually, but not invariably, after consultation with the Dean of the Faculty or the Vice-Chancellor. They are sometimes of three years' tenure with or without possible extension, sometimes subject merely to terminal notice on either side.
In the last four or five years contributory pension schemes for the professorial body and for permanent assistants in receipt of a specified income (usually £250 or £200 and upwards) have been compulsorily established at all British Universities in receipt of a Government grant. In June 1913, the Advisory Committee on the Distribution of Exchequer Grants to Universities and University Colleges laid on the table of the House of Commons a scheme which came into force on 29th September, and is compulsory on every member of the staff entering a University after that date at a salary of £300 or upwards. Members appointed at salaries of between £200 and £300 have the option of joining the scheme, while those appointed at salaries of between £160 and £200 may join with the consent of the institution. Members of existing schemes are entitled to join under similar conditions. Special facilities are given for the transference of policies from one University to another, since the view is taken that the teachers in all the Universities constitute a profession comparable with the Civil Service, and that transference from one University to another should not be accompanied by a financial penalty any more than is transference from one Government office to another.
A competent girl who can bide her time can usually get a footing in some University. Her future advancement will depend on her value to the institution, on her original writing and research even more than on her teaching, work on committees and influence with the students. Largely, too, it will depend on her tact and popularity with her colleagues: to a very considerable extent it still rests also on conditions over which she has no control, and which are part and parcel of the slow recognition of a woman's right to compete on equal terms with men.
It seems, as far as can be judged, that future opportunities are likely to occur when the right candidates for posts are there in sufficient numbers to make their exclusion on the ground of sex, already seldom explicitly stated, impossible or inexpedient. Meanwhile it is probable that individual women will continue, in some cases, to suffer injustice, while in others, by virtue of their unquestionable attainments and strength of personality, they may attain the positions they desire. Slow progress is not altogether bad for the ultimate cause of women at the Universities: nothing could injure that cause so much as mistakes at the initial stage. An important appointment given to the wrong woman, or to one in any respect inferior to her colleagues, would be used as an argument against further experiment for many years.
University women teachers can best help to secure equality of opportunity by rendering themselves indispensable members of the body corporate. In their case much is required of those to whom little is given. Above all they must avoid the temptation to live entirely in the absorbing interests of the present: they must remember that it is the business of a University to make contributions to learning as well as to teach. Secondly, they must insist on equality of payment and status when there is any disposition, overt or acknowledged, to differentiate on the score of sex. It is not right to yield on these points, for an important principle is at stake. On the other hand the time and place for insistence must be wisely selected, and any claim made must be incontrovertible on the score of justice and practicability. Lastly, women on committees and elsewhere are not justified in keeping unduly in the background. When they have something worth contributing to the discussion, it is not modesty but lack of business capacity, which makes them silent. "Mauvaise honte" is as much out of place as undue pertinacity. Women who are unwilling or unable to assert themselves when necessary, are not in place at a co-educational University. Most women, however, will derive intellectual stimulus from the free interchange of opinion, possible only when both sexes are working happily together, with common interests and common aims.
If relatively too much space in this article has been given to women's work at mixed Universities, the excuse lies ready to hand. In Women's Colleges there is, of course, no sex bar, and the way lies clear from the bottom to the top of the ladder. Conditions of appointment, tenure, and work do not greatly differ from those described, except in so far as the stipends tend to be lower, especially for more responsible posts, when these are ordinarily occupied by women. It is a sign of the times that in at least one Women's College in a mixed University, it has been recently necessary to rule that posts are open to men as well as to women, unless it is specially stated to the contrary. Thus, when the power is theirs, women also may be unwisely tempted to erect a new form of sex barrier. To do so would be to play into the hands of those enemies who are always raising the voice against equal pay for equal work. The most suitable candidate for a post is the one who should be selected, irrespective of sex. It is this principle that women are endeavouring to establish. They must do so by scrupulous fairness when the power is theirs: by making themselves indisputably most fitted, when they are knocking at the closed door.