['Does reason drive out tenderness and love?'--debates about women and education in 1898]

In The Netherlands the first female medical student was admitted in 1871, despite formidable public resistance; the issue of higher education for women would remain controversial for several decades to come. In 1898, the coronation year of the 18-year-old Queen Wilhelmina, the subject was discussed in two separate lectures before a women's rights movement in Rotterdam. Speakers were the medical professors H. Treub (gynaecologist, proponent) and C. Winkler (psychiatrist and neurologist, opponent). In that same year the issue was also debated in journal articles. The main questions around which the arguments for and against women of academic standing revolved, were firstly the innate ability of women to reach the very top in any science or art and secondly the necessity to disown innate femininity in the process.