The Sodality movement has been initiated in the 16th c. and it was around then that the first sodality organizations were created in Poland. The Sodality of Our Lady for Women Students and Female Participants of Higher Courses in Krakow was founded in 1906; it co-created the Krakow sodality movement in the interwar period together with the Sodality Movement of the Academicians at the Jagiellonian University, the Sodality Movement of the Academicians of the Academy of Mining and the Sodality Movement of the Students of the Higher Commercial College in Krakow. In 1925 the Sodality of Our Lady for Women Students and Female Participants of Higher Courses in Krakow became transformed into the Sodality of Our Lady for Women Academicians and when the ruling concerning academic associations was introduced in 1933, the organization had changed its name into: Sodality of Our Lady for Women Students of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. The latter organization had laid special emphasis on religious instruction and spiritual formation of its female members, which is a characteristic feature of all sodality movements. But apart from the activity which was focused on the spiritual sphere, the Sodality movement also provided assistance in the strictly material sphere both to sodality members and persons from outside the organization – among others, to children, those in need of material aid or the sick who were undergoing treatment in St. Lazarus or St. Ludwig Hospitals in Kraków
The text is devoted to women’s presence in the Polish higher education in 1918-2018. Its history is presented in chronological-thematic order, including information about the beginnings of women’s studies at universities as well as their basic political, economic and cultural conditioning. Although during the discussed period, basis of political system in Poland changed three times, there was a constant development of the size of higher education, as well as an increase of women’s participation among students and academic faculty. The beginnings were very modest. However, today women constitute already the majority of students of higher education and almost a half of academic employees. Women, during their fight for equality in access to studies and academic career, had to overcome many legal obstacles, also informal ones, resulting from vitality of the image of traditional social role of women. Even though, the formal equality was gradually earned, it is still more difficult for women than for men to undertake studies at some faculties, and to get higher degrees and academic positions as fast as men.
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