At the time I began work in university, I entered a world which was leisured, privileged and patriarchal, in the United Kingdom at least...I came from a world in which only 3% of the population aspired to university. I belonged to a world in which, having got where I was through the eleven-plus and "A" levels, there was almost a sense…

This article tells the stories of four middle class, white, English women whose participation in educational policy making is little known: Annie Leigh Browne (1851-1936), Margaret MacDonald (1870-1911), Hilda Miall-Smith (born 1861) and Honnor Morten (1861-1913). In doing so, it provides a perspective on the circumstances that enabled or…