Skip to Main Content

Research Guides

University of Toronto History: A Bibliography

Introduction

The sources below explore a variety of subjects related to the experiences of women at The University of Toronto, including gender-based disparities and exclusions.

General resource

Ford, Anne Rochon. A Path Not Strewn with Roses: One Hundred Years of Women at the University of Toronto, 1884-1984. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984.

Exclusion of women at Hart House

Hart House. “40 Years of Women at Hart House.” Blog, May 29, 2019. https://harthouse.ca/blog/40-years-of-women-at-hart-house.

Kilgour, David, ed. A Strange Elation: Hart House, the First Eighty Years. Toronto: Hart House, 1999.

The Varsity. “Forty Years On,” March 18, 2013. https://thevarsity.ca/2013/03/17/forty-years-on/.

University of Toronto. A President and Protest Come to Hart House | Old School Stories EP2, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x7Q51txZtA.

Faculty and administrative work

Ainley, Marianne Gosztonyi. “Gendered Careers: Women Science Educators at Anglo-Canadian Universities, 1920-1980.” In Historical Identities: The Professoriate in Canada, edited by Paul Stortz and E. Lisa Panayotidis, 248–70. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.

Ainley, Marianne Gosztonyi. “Last in the Field? Canadian Women Natural Scientists, 1815-1965.” In Despite the Odds: Essays on Canadian Women and Science, edited by Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, 25–62. Montreal: Véhicule Press, 1990.

Ainley, Marianne Gosztonyi. “Marriage and Scientific Work in Twentieth-Century Canada: The Berkeleys in Marine Biology and the Hoggs in Astronomy.” In Creative Couples in the Sciences, edited by Helena Pycior, Nancy Slack, and Pnina Abir-Ams, 143–55. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996.

MacDonald, Sara Z. “An Insurrection of Women: Deans of Women and Student Government after the Great War.” Historical Studies in Education / Revue d’histoire de l’éducation, April 16, 2019. https://doi.org/10.32316/hse-rhe.v31i1.4661.

Prentice, Alison. “Bluestockings, Feminists, or Women Workers? A Preliminary Look at Women’s Early Employment at the University of Toronto.” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association New Series, 2 (1991): 231–61.

Prentice, Alison. “Boosting Husbands and Building Community: The Work of Twentieth-Century Faculty Wives.” In Historical Identities: The Professoriate in Canada, edited by Paul Stortz and E. Lisa Panayotidis, 271–96. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.

Prentice, Alison. “Women Becoming Professional Scholars: Historians and Physicists.” In Learning to Practise, Professional Education in Historical and Contemporary Perspective, edited by Ruby Heap, Wyn Millar, and Elizabeth Smyth, 213–38. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2005.

Student experience

Burke, Sara Z. “Becoming Undergraduates: Women and University Culture in Nineteenth- Century Canada.” In Women in Higher Education, 1850-1970: International Perspectives, edited by E. Lisa Panayotidis and Paul Stortz, 97–118. New York: Routledge, 2015.

Burke, Sara Z. “‘Being Unlike Man’: Challenges to Co-Education at the University of Toronto, 1884-1909.” Ontario History XCIII, no. 1 (2001): 11–31.

Burke, Sara Z. “Dancing into Education: The First World War and the Roots of Change in Women’s Higher Education.” In Cultures, Communities, and Conflict: Histories of Canadian Universities and War, edited by Paul Stortz and E.Lisa Panayotidis, 95–120. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012.

Burke, Sara Z. “New Women and Old Romans: Co-Education at the University of Toronto, 1884-1895.” Canadian Historical Review 80, no. 2 (June 1999): 219–41.

Burke, Sara Z. Seeking the Highest Good: Social Service and Gender at the University of Toronto, 1888-1937. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996.

Duffin, Jacalyn. “The Quota: ‘An Equally Serious Problem’ for Us All.” CBMH/BCHM 19, no. 2 (2002): 94–101.

Gidney, Catherine. “Dating and Gating: The Moral Regulation of Men and Women at Victoria and University Colleges, University of Toronto, 1920-60.” Journal of Canadian Studies 41, no. 2 (2007): 138–60. https://doi.org/10.3138/jcs.41.2.138.

Heap, Ruby. “‘The Only Girl in Such a Big Class’ : Women Students at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering.” Scientia Canadensis 29, no. 2 (2006): 3–15. https://doi.org/10.7202/800519ar.

Heap, Ruby. “Training Women for a New ‘Women’s Profession’: Physiotherapy Education at the University of Toronto, 1917-1940.” History of Education Quarterly 35, no. 2 (1995): 135–58.

Heap, Ruby, and Ellen Scheinberg. “‘Just One of the Gang’: Women at the University of Toronto/s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, 1939-1950.” In Learning to Practise, Professional Education in Historical and Contemporary Perspective, edited by Ruby Heap, Wyn Millar, and Elizabeth Smyth, 189–211. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2005.

Kiefer, Nancy, and Ruth Roach Pierson. “The War Effort and Women Students at the University of Toronto, 1939-1945.” In Youth, University and Canadian Society: Essays in the Social History of Higher Education, edited by Paul Axelrod and John G. Reid, 161–86. Kingston, Ont: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1989.

King, Alyson. “Centres of ‘Home-like Influence’: Residences for Women at the University of Toronto.” Material History Review 49 (1999): 39–59.

Levi, Charles M. “Phyllis Grierson, Margaret Ross and the Queen’s Hall Girls: Intergroup Conflict among University College Women, 1910-1921.” Historical Studies in Education 12 (2000): 73–92.

Millar, W.J.P., and R.D. Gidney. “”Medettes”: Thriving or Just Surviving? Women Students in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, 1910-1951.” In Challenging Professions: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Women’s Professional Work, edited by Elizabeth Smyth, 215–33. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999.

Prentice, Alison. “A Blackboard in Her Kitchen: Women and Physics at the University of Toronto.” Scientia Canadensis 29, no. 2 (2006): 17–44. https://doi.org/10.7202/800518ar.

Quiney, Linda J. “‘We Must Not Neglect Our Duty’: Enlisting Women Undergraduates for the Red Cross during the Great War.” In Cultures, Communities, and Conflict: Histories of Canadian Universities and War, edited by Paul Stortz and E. Lisa Panayotidis, 71–94. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012.

Sethna, Christabelle. “The University of Toronto Health Service, Oral Contraception and Student Demand for Birth Control, 1960-1970.” Historical Studies in Education/Revue d’histoire de l’Éducation 17, no. 2 (2005): 265–92. https://doi.org/10.32316/hse/rhe.v17i2.79