Krakowskie gimnazja żeńskie przełomu XIX i XX wieku
All-Female Secondary Schools in Krakow at the Turn of the 20th Century

Summary/Abstract: The issue of providing education to women became particularly important in the Polish territories during the second half of the 19th century. In the Austrian partition, women were allowed to take secondary school exit exams and enroll in universities in the 1890s. However, no female school at the time offered preparation to the aforementioned exams. As the government did not want to establish public all-female schools in the same way that it had created public all-male schools, a private solution was the only one. Private all-female schools emerged through a bottom-up effort as a response to the needs of society. The first school of this kind in Galicia – and all of the Polish territories – was established in Krakow in 1896. Before the outbreak of World War I, there were only four all-female secondary schools in Krakow. Still, with time, the concept of all-female secondary schools became very popular and more than half of the students of all-female secondary schools in the Habsburg Monarchy attended such schools in Galicia.

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