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Bezig met laden... Sympathy and Science: Women Physicians in American Medicinedoor Regina Morantz-Sanchez
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When first published in 1985, Sympathy and Science was hailed as a groundbreaking study of women in medicine. It remains the most comprehensive history of American women physicians available. Tracing the participation of women in the medical profession from the colonial period to the present, Regina Morantz-Sanchez examines women's roles as nurses, midwives, and practitioners of folk medicine in early America; recounts their successful struggles in the nineteenth century to enter medical schools and found their own institutions and organizations; and follows female physicians into the twentieth century, exploring their efforts to sustain significant and rewarding professional lives without sacrificing the other privileges and opportunities of womanhood. In a new preface, the author surveys recent scholarship and comments on the changing world of women in medicine over the past two decades. Despite extraordinary advances, she concludes, women physicians continue to grapple with many of the issues that troubled their predecessors. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)610.82Technology Medicine and health Medicine People in medicine Women of medicineLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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Essentially, Morantz-Sanchez looks at the supposed feminine virtues and the medical ones throughout history. Depending on how both medicine and femininity are constructed, sometimes these are in alignment, sometimes they are divergent, sometimes they correspond in limited ways, i.e., perhaps women are perceived as not having the detachment necessary to be doctors, but because of their sympathy they can be nurses. If a woman is expected to be a moral guardian, she ought not to sully her hands by being a physical one. But this didn't stop many women, of course, and by the end of the nineteenth century, 4-5% of physicians were women, and they had their own dedicated medical programs. She argues that women made better doctors in some senses in the nineteenth century: they were more sensitive to women's rights, they were less prone to lumping people together in categories (e.g., "the poor"), they were more attentive than men after delivery in childbirth cases.
But the rise of scientific medicine drove women out: one of the arguments for women physicians was that they took a holistic and emotional approach, but the particularizing gaze of scientific medicine had no room for that. And then, as nursing rose as a profession, the perception was that women in medicine ought to be nurses-- even though the nurses actually came from a different social class than the physicians had. Women did find a space in public health in the early twentieth century, though; its focus on home life left it as an area where women could claim greater authority than men. This also gave women strong authority in the closely related eugenics movement, and unsurprisingly, imposing rationality on the social environment was often just disguised racism; I don't think Morantz-Sanchez flinched from pointing out the moral lapses of women's involvement in American medicine.
Then, in the 1930s-50s, college-educated women increasingly opted for marriage over professions, and the growing ambivalence to women-only institutions made it hard for women to find a space to do medical training. But-- thanks to capitalism, in the late twentieth century, most professions recouped the women who had left the work force. I thought this was amusing, apparently, as Morantz-Sanchez specifically denies that feminism played a significant role in the shift back to professional women.
So, apparently, in its discussion of morality and science, a book more relevant to my interests than I thought, though perhaps more useful as general background than something to cite in my dissertation.