[HN Gopher] Permission to Practise Medicine
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Permission to Practise Medicine
Author : pepys
Score : 42 points
Date : 2025-01-26 17:57 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blogs.bl.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (blogs.bl.uk)
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| > However, while women did take up medical roles, they could
| undoubtedly face animosity and suspicion as a result.
|
| > ... without hindrance or disturbance from those people who
| might regard her with contempt or otherwise mistrust her medical
| knowledge.
|
| > Unfortunately, we do not know any further details about the
| kinds of resistance Joan faced as a physician or the medical
| treatments she performed, or even if Henry ever granted her
| request.
|
| I appreciate the historical evidence and what it means to us
| _today_. I disagree with the wild conjecture _why_ she wrote this
| request.
|
| I believe this request by Joan du Lee is more about making
| medicine a profession like carpetry, masonry and similar which
| were supported through masters, journeymen and guilds, than about
| hindrance based on sex.
|
| Midwifes and doulas have been around for millennia in all
| cultures. In my limited knowledge, I am not aware of a culture
| where most of these roles are not females.
|
| Midwifery is a narrow field, but there were lot of fully
| acknowledged "doctors". Our first evidence was for Peseshet (c.
| 2600 BC, Ancient Egypt), the "Lady Overseer of the Female
| Physicians", meaning that she was not only the doc but there was
| an entire "school" of female "docs".
|
| There are of course also Enheduanna (c. 2300 BC, Sumer),
| Mesopotamian Healing Women (c. 2000 BC and earlier), and of
| course Agnodice, from the Greek tradition (c. 5th century BC and
| earlier).
| watwut wrote:
| > I am not aware of a culture where most of these roles are not
| females.
|
| Literally Europe, in between the time when births moved to
| hospitals and before women became doctors. There were no
| "midwifes" nor "doulas" present during birth.
|
| Also, literally whole communist block the whole time and also
| long after the communism felt. While midwifes and doulas just
| were not a thing. The nurses are all women, doctors used to be
| almost only men and now are mix of men and women.
| n4r9 wrote:
| > Europe, in between the time when births moved to hospitals
| and before women became doctors
|
| Don't know about the rest of Europe, but in the UK midwives
| became an official profession in 1902 and have consistently
| almost all been women, whilst most births would have been at
| home until the introduction of the NHS in 1948.
| jdougan wrote:
| My Mom was a midwife in London in the mid-20th century. She
| used to joke that she was a black belt...in midwifery.
| Apparently the belt colors had meaning then and still do
| other places (after a quick search it looks like Ghana
| still uses a black belt for midwives).
| bloak wrote:
| In the Soviet Union most doctors were women. Random citation:
| "In 1917, 17 percent of doctors were women, yet by 1940 61
| percent were women. From the 1950s the figure fluctuated at
| around 65-70 percent (Ryan, 1989: 38)."
| watwut wrote:
| Most of them pediatricians and the first contact doctors.
| The gender split depended on the specialty.
|
| The gynecologic and doctors doing childbirths were
| frequently men. Likewise, surgeons. And there was
| stereotype of them being better then women.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| You are very wrong w.r. to communist block. Women's
| participation in medicine (and other intellectual
| professions) was generally high, possibly higher than in the
| west.
| watwut wrote:
| The gender split depended on specialist. Pediatricians
| would be women much more often then surgeons. Gynecologists
| were frequently men, the more in-hospital you are, the more
| men you would encounter.
|
| The eastern europe idea of what is "intellectual" or
| "important" was different then western one, leading to
| women having different jobs. Good half of what Americans
| consider "intellectual" was seen as administrative and
| boring. Economics is an example of women supposedly doing
| something more progressive, but in eastern europe it was
| being seen as easy school for future administrative workers
| that dont require "real" specialization.
| pbalau wrote:
| My mom is a doctor, pediatrician, and she finished medical
| school end of 70s or beginning of 80s.
|
| One of her coworkers went by the title "moasa", the Romanian
| word for midwife.
| watwut wrote:
| Women become doctors long before 70s and 80ties. There
| being word for a midwife in that language does not imply
| practicing midwifes during communism. They have word for
| knight too and knights were not a thing either.
| pbalau wrote:
| You are deliberately obtuse.
| sapphicsnail wrote:
| Are you trying to say that women historically haven't had any
| obstacles to becoming doctors? Just because you can point to a
| handful of exceptions doesn't mean that discrimination doesn't
| exist. I don't know as much about the Middle Ages but read some
| Galen or pretty much any Greek author and tell me with a
| straight face that any of these people would have no problems
| with women being doctors.
| gosub100 wrote:
| Just because you can show fewer women than men do a thing
| doesn't mean that it's caused by discrimination. Do you think
| men are discriminated by salons, massage parlors, or
| preschool teacher positions? It's sexism right?
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