Page:University Education for Women.djvu/7

 Presidential Address to the Education Society, Manchester University.

subject on which I propose to address you this afternoon concerns mainly the uses of University Education for women who are not obliged to earn their own living. The use of University Education for women who are intending to take up professions for which University Education directly prepares is of course obvious. But new and more general considerations arise when the question of entering a profession is itself an open one, and for parents at any rate the problems involved are not always easy of solution.

I am not sure that before I begin I ought not to apologise for choosing as the subject of my address one that is perhaps more interesting to myself than to you, and that in some ways concerns parents more than teachers. I have, however, had very little to do with the education of children, no experience of teaching in schools, and hardly any of teaching at all; but, on the other hand, I have, as you know, done a good deal of work in helping to provide educational opportunities for women, and especially opportunities of obtaining University Education, and I have seen a good deal of young women passing through a University, and to some extent have been able to follow their careers afterwards. So reflecting that you would hardly have done me the honour of electing me your president in order to hear from me views on subjects with which many of you are necessarily better acquainted than I am, I will apologise no more for talking about my own subjects, and will at once try to discuss the advantages