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Abstract
Within the literature of the Enlightenment there are voices that called for the emancipation of women,1 and so began a—still unfinished—struggle for equality at home and in society. The campaign for women to enter the professions started in the 19th century.2 Women who wished to qualify and work as doctors faced what must have seemed to those of lesser courage and ability, to be insurmountable resistance. The early women doctors of the 19th century who were forced to obtain their training on the continent—in Zurich, Bern, and Paris—were part of a political movement and transatlantic network concerned with issues of women’s rights, universal suffrage, women’s health and public health measures.2–,6 These women who “stormed the citadel” wanted to, and did, change society as well as medicine. Opposition to women’s entry into medicine was led by doctors who defended the male monopoly against the threat to their prestige and purse. They argued that a woman’s place was in the home as a wife and mother. Women’s bodies, intellect, and temperament were not up to the demands of studying medicine, let alone practising as doctors.3–,5 These arguments did not stop, but echoed down the 20th century long after women had gained the right to qualify in medicine.
- history of paediatrics
- medical history
- women doctors
- women paediatricians
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Due to an editorial error the abstract was omitted from this article and the first paragraph of the text wrongly printed as the abstract thereby altering the sense and meaning of the first two paragraphs that are meant to be read together.
To read the article in the form that the author intended we advise readers to refer to the revised pdf online http://adc.bmjjournals.com/cgi/reprint/91/10/866 rather than the printed issues.
The correct abstract is as follows.
Abstract:The early women doctors who won the right to qualify in medicine are compared with the early women paediatricians in 20th century England. Both groups had to find their occupations in a male dominated profession by taking up work that was not met by men. Early women doctors founded their own hospitals and clinics and a similar pattern can be seen with women paediatricians who were in many parts of England, pioneers in the newly emerging speciality of paediatrics, neonatology and other disciplines within paediatrics. Barred from training at Great Ormond Street and in medicine in the major hospitals, women came to paediatrics through more varied routes than men. Their careers could not be planned but depended on chance, sacrifice, and often the opportunities that came through the wartime shortage of manpower. Male paediatricians were slow to accept women as equals and barred them from membership of the British Paediatric Association until 1945. Unlike the early women doctors the early women paediatricians were not as a group as politically active but the presence of a woman consultant paediatrician was itself a political statement and the work of women paediatricians gave a message to the wider world of medicine that was instrumental in destroying the male myth that women could not excel in medicine.
Keywords: history of paediatrics; medical history; women doctors; women paediatricians
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