Biographies help researchers learn about social mobility

By Marlene Jørgensen, marl@sam.sdu.dk

In the year 1874, 23-year-old Nielsine Nielsen was the first woman to apply to the University of Copenhagen, almost 400 years after the University was founded in 1479.

Nielsine Nielsen grew up in a relatively well-off family with a father who was a shipowner. As a child, she lost a brother in a shipwreck and one of her three sisters died of typhoid. It is rumoured that these losses inspired her to become a doctor.

Nielsine Nielsen’s application to study medicine at the University sparked a lengthy debate about women’s access to the University, and in 1875, women were allowed to study at the University (with the exception of theology). Next year marks the 150th anniversary of this event.

Two years later, in 1877, Nielsine Nielsen became Denmark’s first female student, since students also took their matriculation exam (A-levels) at the university at the time. And in 1885, she became the country’s first female doctor.

In other words, Nielsine Nielsen was a pioneer. She not only paved the way for women to study at university, she also joined the women’s movement and fought for women’s suffrage, among other things.

She died in 1916, one year after women gained the right to vote in Denmark.

This is some of what you can read about Nielsine Nielsen in historical sources, such as danmarkshistorien.dk.

More options to choose from

Nielsine Nielsen is also featured in a research project at SDU in which researchers are investigating educational reforms among other things, including what it meant for women to gain access to university.

The project titled ‘Human Capital of the Nordic Countries’ is supported by the Carlsberg Foundation, the Danish National Research Foundation and foundations in Norway and Sweden. And it is headed by Professor Paul Sharp from the Department of Economics, who says:

- In her diary, Nielsine Nielsen wrote ‘knowledge is power’, which emphasises that when you are allowed to learn, you are allowed to choose. So when women were allowed to go to university in 1875, they had more options to choose from, even though they could not initially train as a pastor or pursue a career as a civil servant, for example.

People who belong to the country’s elite families have a head start and are more likely to do well - Paul Sharp 

In the project, Paul Sharp and his colleagues are also mapping who was admitted to university and how they fared after graduating. They do this on the basis of student grades and short biographies about the graduates’ careers and lives after graduation.

The biographies span a period from 1760 and up until after World War II and include around 110,000 Danish and Norwegian graduates, as Norwegians had to travel to Denmark to study until the University of Oslo was founded in 1813.

Social mobility in the past

And biographies are a goldmine of information, says Paul Sharp:

- The biographies say something about mobility within a person’s lifetime, for example, whether the careers of men advance more quickly than those of women. If you look at the very first women to enter universities, many of them did better academically than the men, but a large proportion of the women married and became housewives, since social norms until well into the 1900s dictated that women could not work once they were married. Some women took a completely different path, like Nielsine Nielsen who neither married nor had children, but put her energy into her career and women’s rights.

The database also provides important information about whether Danish society is as mobile as we think it is.

- There are several well-known examples of family dynasties in Danish politics and science. Politicians Jakob and Karen Ellemann-Jensen’s father and grandfather were also members of parliament. Nobel Prize winner and physicist Niels Bohr was the son of a professor of medicine, his son also won the Nobel Prize in Physics, and several of his grandchildren became important researchers. And there are other, more modest examples, says Paul Sharp, continuing:

- Evidence also suggests that people who belong to the country’s elite families have a head start and are more likely to do well. It’s not really surprising, but the difference is that we can now quantify it. We have information about people from their school days all the way through their careers and can therefore show exactly how much or how little mobility there is in Danish society.

After World War II, biographies of all university students were no longer written, although some works on specific professions, such as doctors, and for certain schools are still being produced. The biographies were probably discontinued because more and more people were graduating from university, and also because Denmark began collecting and building up extensive register data at this time.

Are we breaking the social legacy?

Among the next tasks for the researchers is linking the historical sources with register data up to the present day to examine social mobility through generations, going back hundreds of years.

- Our expectation is that we will see a lesser degree of social mobility when we go back many generations rather than just two or three generations. So if you become a doctor or a politician, it’s very likely that some of your ancestors held similar positions all the way back to the 1700s, even if your parents or grandparents have different backgrounds, says Paul Sharp and continues:

- Usually, Scandinavian countries are thought to have achieved greater mobility than most countries, but perhaps this picture will change when we consider our entire network of relatives. Paul Sharp and his colleagues hope that the research project can contribute knowledge and perspectives to policy making that aims to promote social mobility or compensate for lack of social mobility, for example, through transfer processes.

- How much difference do reforms make? How much difference does living close to a university make? And how much difference do our relatives’ education, status and jobs make for our own life outcomes? We hope to learn much more about these things, Paul Sharp explains.

The picture of Nielsine Nielsen was provided by Det Kongelige Bibliotek