Women Physicians and the Cultures of Medicine (review)

In 1984, Judith Walzer Leavitt edited a volume entitled Women and Health in America: Historical Readings (Madison, Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), an outstanding collection of articles exploring the history of women in medicine. Now, finally, a quarter of a century later, another equally impressive collection of essays has been published, this one edited by Ellen S. More, Elizabeth Fee, and Manon Parry. Leavitt's volume, which included essays on a broad range of issues related to women's health and health careers, proved to be a mainstay for courses on the history of medicine and gender studies, and medicine in America. This book focuses more narrowly on women physicians, but its essays are equally impressive, and it, too, should become a staple in many courses. The essays include contributions by female historians and one male historian that were initially presented at a symposium hosted by the National Library of Medicine, entitled "Women Physicians, Women's Politics, and Women's Health: Emerging Narratives."

Divided into three sections, Women Physicians and the Cultures of Medicine explores how women physicians have handled the challenges inherent in gender expectations and professionalism, as well as how they have chosen to explore new settings and types of medical practices. Part 1 is a series of five biographical essays examining how women doctors have adapted to the masculine culture of medicine. Three of these essays provide fresh and interesting new examinations of fairly well-known early women doctors: Mary Putnam Jacobi, Marie Zakrzewska, and Mary Dixon Jones. Two additional essays reveal fascinating portraits of two women whose sexual orientation or sexual politics defied contemporary expectations for women, Margaret Chung and Mary Steichen Calderone. Part 2, Challenging the Culture of Professionalism, includes a fascinating essay by Robert A. Nye that deepens our understanding of the masculine culture that women physicians tried to enter. Sandra Morgen's essay on the Boston Women's Health Book Collective explores the complex interactions between women physicians who existed somewhat uneasily within a male-dominated profession and women's health activism that defied that dominant culture. Naomi Rogers's exploration of sexist humor and women medical students in the 1970s is a gem that will resonate with today's women medical students. The final section of the book, Exploring the Boundaries, looks at women physicians at work in previously under-explored areas—as part of a blended community of sectarian and regular physicians, as missionaries, and on college campuses.

This readable collection of essays is buttressed by a fine introduction and conclusion that ably demonstrate the importance of understanding the cultures in which women physicians lived and practiced medicine. Each essay in the book offers a case study of women exploring the implicit and explicit boundaries inherent in medical practice. While the challenges that women physicians have faced have changed over the almost two centuries covered in this book, challenges nevertheless remain. This book is a valuable addition to the history of women's struggle for fulfilling careers in medicine.