The Doctor in Search of Herself’

Women doctors’ autobiographies, second wave feminism, and the feminist women’s health movement, 1976-1987

Bibliographic Data

ID12692240
AuthorsElizabeth Evens (0000-0003-3679-7747, Newcastle University, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume50
Issue3
Pages520-528
Publication date2024-05-31
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueMedical Humanities (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1468-215X • E-ISSN: 1473-4265
PublisherBMJ (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1136/medhum-2023-012881
PMID38821868
OpenAlexW4399199518
LanguageEN
References cited32

Second wave feminist legal and educational reform contributed to the fourfold rise in the number of women doctors in the United States between 1970 and 1990, challenging the hierarchical medical workplace from within. At the same moment, the feminist women's health movement (FWHM) identified and protested gendered health disparities, changing medical practice from without. This article analyses five women doctors' autobiographical reflections of medical training published between 1976 and 1987, during this period of gendered upheaval. In these works, authors shared their experiences of entering a male-dominated profession, addressing second wave feminist concerns about women's workplace equality. They explored whether women could become full and equal members of the medical professional, but also how women should become members of a profession that mistreated female patients in ways the FWHM sought to address. Through autobiographical writing, women doctors shared experiences that amplified these reform imperatives, while reflecting on their position as agents within an unequal healthcare system

Aesthetics · Art · Family medicine · Feminism · Feminist movement · Movement (music · Sociology · Women Physicians · Feminist Theory and Gender Studies · Gender Studies · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Medicine

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