D Stevens. Pride, prejudice, and paediatrics (women paediatricians in England before 1950). Arch Dis Child 2006;91:866–70. Owing to an editorial error the wrong abstract was published for this article, which had the unfortunate effect of distorting the structure and meaning of the first two paragraphs. The corrected abstract is given below.

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.