The chapter on the school for Muslim girls in Baku, Azerbaijan was begun during time spent as a school administrator in an international school there in the 1990s and completed with the assistance of a generous scholarship provided by the Fulbright Foundation. I returned to Baku for four months as a Fulbright scholar in 2018 and my thanks go to the Rector and Vice-Rectors at Azerbaijan State...

My interest in the first schools to serve girls from social or cultural groups with no previous access to education developed while exploring the historical provision of schooling in my home city of Norwich, England. Walking through one of the many small streets of an old Victorian neighborhood in the city I noticed, on the wall of a building in current use by Norwich Art College, a sign in faded...

The Moravian School for Girls in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, one of the earliest and longest surviving girls’ schools in the United States, was founded by a woman, and led and administered from 1743 to 1932 by male principals and school board members. The school was operated by a religious sect, the Moravians, espousing high quality education for girls at times when similar groups considered...

Providing an education for the lowest caste of Hindu girls in the cities of Bombay and Pune in Western India in the first half of the nineteenth century was a radical act. A radical act only to be undertaken by ardent social reformers given the climate of indifference to the provision of education by British colonial authorities. It was also an act guaranteed to provoke resistance from the higher...

The city of Norwich in the UK was both an industrial center and administrative focus of the lightly populated and predominantly rural area of East Anglia during a period of educational innovation in Britain in the late 1800s. While geographically isolated from the industrial areas of the north of England, the Midlands and the London conurbation, which were at the forefront of developments in...

The founding of the Singapore Chinese Girls’ School (SCGS) resulted from a weaving together of many themes running through the early history of Singapore. Amongst these was the multi-ethnic nature of the city’s population, the tightening grip of British imperial social organization that threatened ethnic culture, and the entrepreneurial and educational opportunities provided by the...

The story of the founding of the first girls’ schools in Uganda, East Africa, is a story of persistent missionary zeal intersecting with the desire of members of the local ruling elite for limited modernization of their ethnic culture. Gayaza, the first boarding school for the daughters of local tribal chiefs, was and still is located in Kampala, the capital city of what was the Kingdom of...

Azerbaijan owes much of its turbulent history to its position at the crossroads of Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Western Asia, separated from Russia to the north by the Caucasus Mountains and from Iran to south by the Talish and Lesser Caucasus mountains. Baku, the capital city on the shores of the Caspian, was initially settled by Muslim Oghuz Turks for Central Asia. The city was fortified...

The six examples of initiatives to provide schooling for girls otherwise excluded by social class, religion, or cultural constraints from any opportunity to gain an education can only be a tiny proportion of all such endeavors that took place across the world between 1748 and 1910. The schools discussed here were easily accessible for research due to unusually well-organized archiving of documents...

Girls’ education remains an issue of concern in many countries of the world in the twenty-first century, as are issues of gender equality in politics, wages, employment, and opportunities to access needed social services. Just as in the studies of the six schools examined in the previous chapters, individual philanthropists, innovators, and advocates continue to step forward to address...

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Jill Sperandio, PhD, is professor emeritus in the College of Education at Lehigh University, Pennsylvania. In the years preceding her appointment in higher education she served as a classroom teacher, school administrator, and leader in K–12 international schools worldwide. She teachers and presents on topics of educational leadership, and researches aspects of the provision of...