of the student population, and 47% of undergraduate students, were female.
In June 2017, Oxford announced that starting in the 2018 academic year, history students may choose to sit a take-home exam in some courses, with the intention that this will equalise rates of firsts awarded to women and men at Oxford. That same summer, maths and computer science tests were extended by 15 minutes, in a bid to see if female student scores would improve.
The detective novel Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers, one of the first women to gain an academic degree from Oxford, is largely set in the all-female Shrewsbury College, Oxford (based on Sayers' own Somerville College), and the issue of women's education is central to its plot. Social historian and Somerville College alumna Jane Robinson's book Bluestockings: A Remarkable History of the First Women to Fight for an Education gives a very detailed and immersive account of this history.
== Buildings and sites ==
=== Map ===
=== Main sites ===
The university is a "city university" in that it does not have a main campus; instead, colleges, departments, accommodation, and other facilities are scattered throughout central Oxford and in some other areas of the city. The Science Area, in which most science departments are located, is the area that bears closest resemblance to a campus. There is a ten-acre (4-hectare) Radcliffe Observatory Quarter in the northwest of the city.
Iconic university buildings include the Radcliffe Camera, the Sheldonian Theatre used for music concerts, lectures, and university ceremonies, and the Examination Schools, where examinations and some lectures take place. The University Church of St Mary the Virgin was used for university ceremonies before the construction of the Sheldonian.
In 2012–2013, the university built the controversial one-hectare (400 m × 25 m) Castle Mill development of 4–5-storey blocks of student flats overlooking Cripley Meadow and the historic Port Meadow, blocking views of the spires in the city centre. The development has …
