History of Women at the Oxford Union

This term we celebrate our first Black woman President in Anita Okunde who, together with her all women leaership team have put together a magnificant term card https://oxford-union.org/pages/term-card-calendar.  Women's history is clearly a theme. 

When the Society was founded in 1823, it would be a full 111 years before groups of women were admitted for 'morning coffee and afternoon tea'.  One hundred and fourty years would go by before a poll to grant full membership to women was finally - on the second attempt - was passed. 

We have collected some interesting dates in the timeline and invite alumni to help expand our knowledge of women's history at the Union: 

- 1908 Millicent Fawcett - the first woman guest  

- 1922 first (of many) motions to allow women to take part in debates

- 1926 first woman don to speak in the Oxford Union - Lynda Grier

- 1934 women allowed into the Union for afternoon tea and morning coffee

- 1962 women allowed to join as debating members (but could not vote, stand in elections)

- 1962 first vote to allow women to join as full members - Michael Beloff was President - it was defeated

- 1963 Michael Beloff's second motion voted through and women allowed to join as full members (Presidency of Girish Karnad - later an Indian actor /writer)

- 1966 Janet Morgan (Lady Balfour) first woman to gain office

- 1968 Geraldine Jones first woman President

- 1971 Susan Richards (Baroness Kramer) second woman President

- 1977 Benazir Bhutto third woman President

If you played a part in the story of women in the Union, we would very much like to hear from you. Please contact us at development@oxford-union.org.

For more on the history of women in the Union, along with digitised archive collections, please visit our Archive blog.