A New Profession: The Training of Female Mathematics Teachers in the Russian Empire (1878-1918)

<jats:p>This study aims to characterize the mathematical training received by women in a women's higher education programmes in Imperial Russia, created in the 19th century. The Bestuzhev Women's Higher Education Courses (as they became known) qualified them to teach mathematics in girls' high schools. The research was restricted to the Bestuzhev Courses in Saint Petersburg, one of the few in the Russian Empire that remained in operation for four decades. The descriptive and analytical documentary analysis, conducted in a contextualized manner, focused on documents mostly written in Russian and published up to 2019. It was concluded that the period in which these programmes operated was decisive for the entry of women into the teaching profession, previously restricted to men, and for the emergence of the first group of female mathematicians in Saint Petersburg to teach mathematics in higher education.</jats:p>