Estonian Women in Academia: Emerging Scholars Grant Report from Janet Laidla

AABS is pleased to congratulate Janet Laidla for the completion of the Emerging Scholars Grant (awarded 2024) associated with her project “Women in Academia on the Move: Case Study Estonia, 1919–1939.”

Laidla used the Grant to conduct primary source research in the Netherlands, United Kingdom, and United States, adding critical insight to her project. She shared her thoughts with AABS, which we have lightly edited and published below.

Crucial Primary Source Research

Emerging Scholars Grant Report from Janet Laidla

When the University of Tartu of the Estonian Republic in 1919 made the bold decision to change the language of instruction to Estonian, it had to find new staff members as the previous German and Russian speaking university had not been eager to promote Estonian scholars to higher academic positions. In addition to inviting Estonian scholars from the former Russian empire who came to Estonia through opting for the Estonian citizenship and scholars from Finland, promising young candidates were sent to abroad to get their PhDs from various prominent universities. All of these young promising scholars were naturally men.

My project explores the opportunities for academic mobility for women in Estonia during the interwar period. Finnish scholar Timo Rui has studied the mobility of the members of the University of Tartu between the two world wars. He concentrated on larger PhD grants that were offered quite exclusively for men in the beginning of the 1920s as there were fewer candidates among women and perhaps also, at the time, women were not seen as potential future academics. However, between 1919 and 1939 women working at the university did also travel for research.

During the project I worked through the women’s personnel files at the University of Tartu, the Bergmann Foundation, and with the aid from the AABS grant, the sources of International Federation of University Women (and larger national associations in the US and Britain) and the opportunities they facilitated.

Many of the women travelled using their own savings. Elvine Piiper and Gabriele Tehver both travelled to England with their scientist husbands. University staff members Marta Sauga-Jakobson and Elmar Jakobson travelled together. Some, like Aino Suits, received small grants from the university and Marta Schmiedehelm received a grant from the Estonian Bergmann foundation. Rockefeller and Carnegie fellowships were used by Alma Martin and Hilda Taba.

The AABS Emerging Scholars Grant allowed me to study primary sources in three locations outside of Estonia:

• Archives of the International Federation of University Women (now Graduate Women International) in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
• Records of the British Federation of University Women (now the British Federation of Women Graduates) in London, UK.
• American Association of University Women Archives in Washington DC, the US.

Estonian women were very interested in the scholarship opportunities offered through the International Federation of University Women. However, having read through minutes of the grant meetings and looking at the grant proposals of other candidates, I can suggest why many of our scholars were not very successful in receiving these grants. The more popular larger grants were looking for established scholars with a list of publications, and an original and specific research proposals. The main grants were highly competitive. For example, the American International Scholarship for 1927/28 had 61 international candidates from 19 different countries (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Czechoslovakia, England, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Hungary, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Sweden and Switzerland). All 61 were said to have strong proposals and the applications from new countries, such as Estonia, was mentioned. Unfortunately, the Estonian candidates did not even make the short-list.

Other grants were slightly less competitive.

Elvine Kesküla-Erits, later lecturer of Spanish language, was able to secure a fellowship provided through the IFUW from the Spanish Association of University Women (facilitated through them). She was not the only candidate for the grant that year and when reporting on the past recipients of the Spanish grant in June 1936 the list shows that over the past years the grant has gone to Austria, United States, Estonia and then two to Germany.

Leida Adamberg, junior assistant in physiology, was able to secure a scholarship from the American Association of University Women Ames section to pursue studies at the Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts in 1928.

The resulting journal paper will demonstrate how the women in Estonia took advantage of the opportunities provided by several international organisations as well as tried to advance their own careers by gaining international networks and experience during the interwar period.

As I am investigating which factors enabled and inhibited women’s career paths during their first decades in academia, such as laws and regulations, parents, spouses and children, personal will, colleagues and superiors, society’s expectations, alternative job opportunities, financial considerations etc, search for international opportunities will help to highlight the women who were probably interested in pursuing an academic career as some women viewed their position in academia as a temporary one during or right after graduation. The paper will show that many of the women who travelled for research were also pursuing PhD studies.

The US research trip yielded fewer sources than I expected, but in the end, it also made sense, as the grants provided for Estonian women were given by the local associations of the American Association of University Women and not the national one. The longer research tips to London and the Netherlands yielded multitude of primary sources not only on this topic, but also source material for at least two further papers:

• Some items on the relationship between Estonian Women’s League and International Council of Women.
• Items concerning aid provided to Estonian women at DP camps after WWII through the International Federation of University Women and the correspondence concerning the Swedish Estonian Association of University Women after WWII.

Together these papers and materials highlight the role of women in soft foreign policy and international relations of the young Estonian Republic.

A random significant find is what is very probably the draft of Amalie Krims-Kotkas’ speech she gave at the Amsterdam meeting of the International Federation of University Women in 1926. It is unsigned, so this is a guess based on the context.

The Estonian Association of University Women is celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2026 and the plan is that the paper should be published in that year, although in the end, only around third of the paper describes their role in the process.

– Janet Laidla, 2025