The 1944 Education Act and Second Wave Feminism

The women articulating Second Wave Feminism in Britain emerged from the environment created by the 1944 Education Act, which ensured that all girls completed secondary school, with a minority accessing academic girls' grammar schools. For some, the Act also provided a route to professional education in universities or teacher training colleges. A legacy of earlier feminist movements, such all-female residential institutions exercised control, but nevertheless encouraged women's achievements. This article explores the opportunities, tensions and contradictions created by this educational culture from 1945-65, reflected in the views of my contemporaries and the writers, Margaret Cooke, Anne Oakley and Margaret Forster.