This book examines the demands, accomplishments, and limitations of women advocates and educators against the background of the social and cultural conditions which enveloped them. It profiles the experience of women at the University of British Columbia from the founding of the university early in this century until after the Second World War. It also describes the experience of female students and the strategies they devised to participate fully in the academic, cultural, and political life of the university while juggling the contradictory expectations of the academic and social communities. The argument is made that campaigns to open the university to start nursing and home economics programs, to establish the office of dean of women, and to build women's residences each involved the persistent efforts of women reformers, and each eventually succeeded. Further, it is argued that pragmatism, politics, and expedience, far more than a passion for feminism within the university or in the province, accounted for the form that these programs and institutions took. Contains an index and 205 references. (GLR)