Women at Trinity
The path to co-residency

In a way, Trinity’s first warden, Dr Alexander Leeper, was ahead of his time when it came to gender equality. It is well documented that he was a passionate advocate for women’s education, however, in the late 1800s, his views were not shared by many of his contemporaries. Women receiving a tertiary education was certainly not the norm in those times.

 When Lilian Alexander was accepted as a non-resident student at Trinity in 1883 (believed to be the first woman accepted into any Australian university college), Leeper, who admitted her, received letters of protest and did not have the backing of the Trinity College Council.

Thanks to Leeper’s staunch position on the matter, Lilian joined the Trinity community in 1883 and went on to have a distinguished medical career and co-founded the Queen Victoria Hospital for Women and Children.

In 1884, Leeper visited women’s university colleges in the United Kingdom, which inspired him to set up a residential facility for women.

Again, Trinity’s council was not supportive of the move and thus didn’t provide any funds to support the hostel’s establishment, and required that the lease would bear Leeper’s name. The hostel struggled at first, and Leeper and his wife propped it up with their own money.

In 1891, a formal building was opened to house the hostel (the proposal for a stand-alone facility was put forward by Lilian Alexander, among others). The building was partly funded by Lady Janet Clarke, and went on to become a college in its own right in 1962, and is the college we now know as Janet Clarke Hall.

 Trinity College went on to admit women in 1974 (eight of them, in the first instance). Trinity’s fourth warden, Professor Robin Sharwood, is considered the author of Trinity’s move towards co-residency, while the fifth warden, Dr Evan Burge, implemented it.

The women’s liberation movement of the late 1960s is thought to have spurred the conversation about whether women should be admitted as residential students, and a number of colleges on the crescent had moved to a co-ed structure in 1973 and 1973 (International House, Whitley, Ormond and Queen’s, as well as Ridley College).

In his writings, Sharwood noted a cultural shift, whereby there seemed to be a preference amongst students for co-residential structures, and he feared Trinity would be left behind if it did not adapt to the times. The 1972 TCAC had also voted by a majority to admit women, so it seemed the times were changing.