If asked to date when this event happened - when a woman student at Swansea was thrown out of a pub for wanting to drink a pint of beer - people might assume it was from the 1950s. But Jane Simm was actually a student in the mid-1970s. Her experience was not unusual and it reflected the way in which attitudes to women, and to women students, remain quite conservative in this period. But this was also the period of women’s liberation in Swansea, and of many other advances, proving again that University life was not a straightforward experience for anyone during these years.

In this fourth episode, I cover a long sweep of time and examine some of the key turning points and moments of change for both women staff and students at the University.

My name is Sam Blaxland and I have just written a book about Swansea University to mark its 2020 centenary, called Swansea University: Campus and Community in a Post-War World, 1945-2020. In this four-part series I am going to explore some of the more unusual and interesting things I uncovered during this research.