She walks alone through the gate of the University of Copenhagen’s main building. For the first time in the nearly 400-year history of the institution, female students have been admitted. She is one of them.

Nielsine Nielsen has not followed the beaten path. She has had to obtain the necessary instruction herself in order to be admitted. She is barred from the scholarships granted to men. Even if she passes all her exams, she will never be allowed to hold public office.

But here she is. She takes a seat in the lecture hall among 200 men in dark coats, in a room that was built without any thought for her. A professor has compared women like her to prostitutes. She knows that others fear that her mere presence will destroy the masculine spirit of the university.

She listens. She takes notes. But she says nothing. Not yet.

Women did not suddenly gain access to the University of Copenhagen (UCPH) in 1875. It was the result of a slowly growing movement. Across Europe and the United States, the doors of universities had already begun to open up to female students.

The US physician Elizabeth Blackwell had graduated in 1849. In the 1860s, Russian women studied medicine in Zürich. In the Nordic region, Sweden had taken the lead and allowed women to study medicine in 1870.

And now Denmark, too, began to wake up.

»There was a transnational movement under way,« says university historian Pelle Oliver Larsen. He is a postdoc at UCPH and responsible for communicating the history of the 150th anniversary:

»The idea that women should be able to pursue an academic education was in the air, and it was especially driven forward by a specific need for female doctors.«

The need was both a practical and a moral one. Medical science was changing during these years — with new techniques, new instruments, and new ideas. It had become common to assume that women’s illnesses could be traced back to the uterus. This led to women increasingly being subjected to gynaecological examinations — not only by specialists, but also by general practitioners.

»It was a trend in medical history that examinations of the uterus and vagina using instruments became common. And many experienced it as a violation, so more women stopped going to the doctor,« explains Pelle Oliver Larsen.

It was a trend that provoked moral outrage — not just among progressives, but also in conservative circles. In a bourgeois world order where modesty was seen as inherent to womanhood, male doctors in the consultation room posed a problem. When a male doctor performed intimate examinations of a female patient, her modesty — and thereby her femininity — was violated.

And this became an argument that could not be dismissed. Even those who did not believe women should be emancipated could see the logic in the need for female doctors.

Not everyone, however, saw this new trend as progress.

When the university in 1874 was asked by the government to give its opinion on whether women should be granted access to the medical programme, the matter was passed on to the Faculty of Medicine. The verdict from the faculty was blunt.

Professor of surgery Mathias Saxtorph warned that women would ruin their femininity if they were to study side by side with men. He imagined the anatomical nightmare scenario where young women would have to study naked male bodies and venereal diseases in the company of male students. It was not just improper — it was downright destructive to society.

»Saxtorph even compared female students to prostitutes and said that while prostitution is a necessary evil, female students are an unnecessary evil,« says Pelle Oliver Larsen.

The statement became infamous. But it served to expose the underlying divisions. For even at a faculty where there was strong resistance, Saxtorph appeared too radical, and his viewpoint failed to gain support among his colleagues. Among the university’s top leadership, in the academic senate, there were others who shared his concerns — particularly among the theologians — but in the end, the majority backed the proposal to admit female students.

»There was no great enthusiasm for granting women access to the university, but neither was there the same ideological resistance as seen with Saxtorph. What eventually prevailed was a kind of reasoning grounded in fairness,« says Pelle Oliver Larsen.

There were more adult women than men at the time, which meant that not all women could marry and become housewives — the role assigned to them in the society of that era.

So if a woman had the ability and the determination, and if she couldn’t marry anyway, it was hard to find a principled argument against her admission to the university. Most people expected there would only be a few exceptions — and as long as they remained exceptions, the threat seemed negligible.

The university’s acceptance, however, came with certain conditions. Women were still excluded from scholarships and grants. They could take the qualifying exams, but were barred from holding public office. For example, they could take a law degree, but they still could not become judges, prosecutors, or civil servants.

In other words, they could get an education. But they would have to figure out themselves what they were to use it for.

The first two women admitted to the University of Copenhagen were Nielsine Nielsen and Marie Gleerup. They both wanted to become doctors. And although they were granted the same access as men, they were not offered the same circumstances.

They had to pay for their education themselves. And even if they completed their studies, they had no entitlement to employment in the public sector. They could only make use of their education as self-employed, general practitioners.

»You could say that they sat the exam at their own expense and risk,« says Pelle Oliver Larsen:

»They had to prove on their own that they could make something of it.«

Nevertheless, Nielsine Nielsen showed up. In her memoirs, she wrote that she was treated fairly and did not experience any significant violations. But she described the circumstances in the way pioneers often do, as Pelle Oliver Larsen puts it, »with dignity, not with details.«

»There was no sense of victimhood among the first women. They wanted to appear strong. And when they did recount certain episodes, they brushed them off,« says Pelle Oliver Larsen.

There is, however, evidence of differential treatment. The same Professor Saxtorph, who had called them unwanted and compared them to prostitutes, reportedly refused to look at them during exams, according to later female students. And in the early years, female students were, by all accounts, not allowed to dissect alongside the men.

Even so, they succeeded. Many female students achieved good grades, both in upper secondary school and at university. The pressure on them was immense. They not only had to pass — they had to prove that their opponents were wrong.

»They had to be better than their male fellow students. They were few in number, and they knew they were seen as representatives of all women,« says Pelle Oliver Larsen.

Nielsine Nielsen set up her own medical practice and remained politically active in the women’s movement for the rest of her life. Marie Gleerup married, became Marie Krabbe, and ran a medical practice together with her husband in the provinces.

Despite all the obstacles, the University of Copenhagen’s first two female students earned their degrees and became the pioneers who paved the way for women in Danish academia.

When the University of Copenhagen agreed to admit women, it was with no enthusiasm. The argument was not idealistic. It was legal and administrative. Once women had the necessary qualifications, it was difficult to deny them admission with valid reasoning.

»The university was never a pioneering institution when it came to women’s access. On the contrary, it was often one of the most conservative players,« says Pelle Oliver Larsen.

While the university hesitated, the politicians acted. The Rigsdag (the Danish parliament at the time) and the government were, in several respects, more open to women’s access to knowledge and professions than the university management. The Minister for Church and Education, J.C.H. Fischer, played a key role.

When it became clear that the university could find ways to circumvent equality, Fischer and his civil service chose to place new support schemes directly under state control.

This meant that the university was no longer involved in advising on, or assessing, who should receive financial support.

»It caused quite a stir. They bypassed the university’s expertise specifically to prevent it from exerting influence — and thereby avoid the risk of excluding women indirectly,« explains Pelle Oliver Larsen.

Over time, the government and the Rigsdag took further steps to promote women’s academic opportunities. Through a series of reforms in the following decades — women’s access to upper secondary school in 1903 and to public office in 1921 — legislators broke down the barriers for women.

»Even though the university actually recommended in 1904 that women be allowed to hold university professorships, the institution was still marked by a masculine culture,« says Pelle Oliver Larsen.

So despite the fact that the University of Copenhagen this year celebrates itself for having opened its doors to women in 1875, it was not the good will of the institution that drove the change. It was, to a great extent, political pressure, legal interpretation, and the unyielding willpower of a handful of women.

The first women to gain access to the university had to take a long detour — and pay for it. The state-run schools were reserved for boys, so young women had to attend private preparatory courses or study with private tutors. It was expensive, and it required willpower, support, and social capital.

»The first female students came from the educated bourgeoisie. These were women who had attended girls’ schools in the cities, often trained further as teachers, and were driven by a deep thirst for knowledge,« says Pelle Oliver Larsen.

When Danish education legislation in 1903 gave more women access to upper secondary school and university, dropout rates among them became much higher than among their male peers.

Many took only the first part of the degree, the so-called ‘philosophicum’, which served as an entry ticket to further studies. For many, it became the final destination — a year of learning, a proof of their ability. But not necessarily something that led to a working life.

»For many women, the university served as an extension of their cultural education. They took the ‘philosophicum’, and later they married. Not all of them had the ambition to have a career,« says Pelle Oliver Larsen.

And even those who did often had to give it up. Statistics from the early 20th century show that female students dropped out at a much higher rate than men. The main reason was marriage.

»Women with academic degrees largely became housewives. And this wasn’t only due to their own choices, but also to the structure of society and the roles they were assigned,« says Pelle Oliver Larsen.

Even in cases where both husband and wife were trained doctors or lawyers, it was usually the man’s career that took precedence. The woman looked after the home and children. It wasn’t equality — but it was the start of something that could become it.

At the end of the 19th century, the University of Copenhagen was not just an institution. It was a culture. And that culture was masculine — both in its self-image and in its practice. Science was perceived as serious, rational, and elevated. Qualities that, according to the gender norms of the time, were attributed to men.

»The university was a free space for men. It was seriousness and spirit. But it was also alcohol, pushing boundaries, and a certain kind of wildness. It was not a place where you imagined that women could fit in,« says Pelle Oliver Larsen.

Women’s presence was therefore not only met with practical resistance, but also with a cultural unease. Would they change the vibe? Ruin the camaraderie? Change the free space that men considered their own?

In practice, women were often ignored, and they were not included in informal hallway conversations.

»I’ve read a letter to the editor from 1911 in which a student describes how the conversations among his male peers changed when women joined in. A serious discussion about politics or science could suddenly turn into talk about the weather or other trivial topics,« says Pelle Oliver Larsen.

It wasn’t a visible wall, but it was a clear boundary. And yet, something shifted. The women were here to stay. And some began to speak up. Not at the first lecture. Not necessarily during classes. But in associations, in discussions, and in women’s academic work, a quiet revolution was taking root.

Being admitted as a student was one thing. Being allowed to teach — or conduct research with a salary — was something entirely different. University positions were not only reserved for men in practice, but in many cases also through legislation and its interpretation.

Nevertheless, women found their way in.

»We had female researchers quite early on, if we define a researcher as someone who contributes new knowledge. The first was Anna Hude, who completed a doctoral dissertation in history in 1893,« says Pelle Oliver Larsen.

But accomplishments did not necessarily lead to titles or positions. Many women taught as private lecturers or on temporary grants. Some received lecture fees, others received funding from the Danish Parliament to teach — without this leading to permanent employment.

The first woman to be granted official associate professor status was Valfrid Palmgren Munch-Petersen, who taught Swedish. Others, like Lis Jacobsen, lectured as private lecturers. But even though they appeared in the lecture halls, they did not appear on the payroll.

»If we define a proper research position as one where you are paid by the university and research is part of your official duties, we have to go all the way to 1922, when Julie Vinter Hansen became head of the university’s astronomical observatory,« explains Pelle Oliver Larsen.

And the first female professor? That was Astrid Friis, who in 1946 became professor of history. Nearly 70 years after the first women entered as students.

»There were many women who conducted research and taught before that, but without permanent employment. So it was a very long road toward the centre of power,« says Pelle Oliver Larsen.

Today, women make up the majority of students at the University of Copenhagen. Sixty-one per cent of the students enrolled in 2024 were women. This would have been unthinkable 150 years ago.

»If you imagine the Danish healthcare system today without female doctors, it would collapse. That says something about how much society has gained through inclusion,« says Pelle Oliver Larsen.

It did not begin with equality. It began with exceptions. With women who attended girls’ schools, paid for private tutoring, and showed up in the lecture halls without support and with no certainty that their exams would lead to anything.

They stepped into a world that was not built for them. But they stayed anyway.

They became doctors, researchers, educators. Some became housewives, some became pioneers. They were called unnecessary evils. And they became role models.

»The story of women at the university is a reminder that access is not the same as equality. But it also shows how much can be gained when you dare to open the doors,« says Pelle Oliver Larsen.

The university has not always been among the first to do so. But the women walked through the door anyway — and changed the institution from within.