Late in the 19th century, universities in Sweden were organizationally divided according toessentially the same statutes issued by King Charles X. The institutions were old-fashioned, andthe male academic environment was long closed. It was not until 1873 that women won the rightto study at Swedish universities. The road to this had been long and fraught with resistance.Women's right to further studies and the general state of change at Swedish universities can beseen in relation to a larger societal process: industrialization and strong population growth wereimportant factors driving the development of society.
The following essay studies changes in the social structure of students attending Uppsala university between the years 1901 – 1928. By studying the women enrolled at Uppsala universityand the student nation Södermanlands-Nerikes nation and comparing them with male students thepaper presents similarities and differences between the male and female student body. By usingthe method of categorization via HISCO and HISCLASS, created by Marco van Leeuwen andIneke Maas. My study shows that females during the early 20th century faced many obstacles,both economic and social to obtain a university education. Therefore, the demands of the femalestudent’s parents where higher than those of their male counterparts. This leads to my conclusionin which I show that the female students at a higher extent are raised in a higher social categorythan males. I argue that societal obstacles remain even thirty to forty years after 1870 when theuniversity first opened to women in Sweden. My compiled data shows that there is evidence thatpoints towards a slow social mobility where demographic changes in the social structure exists.