The opposition to higher education for women was strong because it drew support from many groups: doctors defending their professional status, clergymen protecting clerical influence in university government, social reformers fighting the exploitation of working women, and idealists planning to ennoble women’s lives. Few people were willing to support higher education for women as long as it meant flouting social convention, incurring God’s wrath, or both. As well as being used to support direct intervention in the design of women’s education, scientific and medical arguments against higher education for women had an indirect influence on the thinking of reformers. Physicians who were forthright in opposing women’s claims to the same higher education as men, gave technical expression to beliefs that were widespread in society. Once residences for women students had been founded in Oxford and Cambridge opinions about higher education for women polarised.