Pride, prejudice, and paediatrics (women paediatricians in England before 1950)

Within the literature of the Enlightenment there are voices that called for the emancipation of women, 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. 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. 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. These arguments did not stop, but echoed down the 20th century long after women had gained the right to qualify in medicine.