The article deals with Polish academic culture and the gender order prevalent therein in the former half of the twentieth century. The protagonists are a group of women who worked, in the circumstances of their time, on their postdoctoral (habilitation) theses. In my perception, this was the group that initiated the processes of change in the gender relations in the academic environment. The struggle for recognition in the world of science is exemplarily shown on the basis of the professional trajectories of Helena Polaczkówna and Helena Willmann--Grabowska.

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Lida Gustava Heymann and Anita Augspurg - activists of the first-wave radical German feminist movement - recently became the patrons of contemporary nonheterosexual women in their struggle for women's rights. This choice of patrons is not accidental: for more than 40 years, Anita and Lida Gustava constituted a community of interests, activism, and emotions. But what does this couple, which lived a century ago and never came out of the closet, have in common with the contemporary feminist and lesbian movement? Was this choice unquestionably right? It certainly forces us to ask whether the contemporary feminist-lesbian movement is a new quality or whether it continues attitudes and postulates from a hundred years ago. Augspurg's and Heyman's example (the way their memory is present in the contemporary lesbian movement) is significant. The two figures, their commitment, their influence on the women's and pacifist movement, as well as their attitude towards homosexuality constitute the main themes of this introductory paper.