Women in medicine

The presence of women in medicine, particularly in the practicing fields of surgery and as physicians, has been traced to the earliest of history. Women have historically had lower participation levels in medical fields compared to men with occupancy rates varying by race, socioeconomic status, and geography.

Women’s informal practice of medicine in roles such as caregivers, or as allied dr katherine white health professionals, has been widespread. Since the start of the 20th century, most countries of the world provide women with access to medical education. Not all countries ensure equal employment opportunities, and gender equality has yet to be achieved within medical specialties and around the world.

History

The involvement of women in the field of medicine has been recorded in several early civilizations. An Egyptian of the Old Kingdom of Egypt, Peseshet, described in an inscription as „lady overseer of the female physicians“, is the earliest woman named in the history of science. Ubartum lived around 2050 BC in Mesopotamia and came from a family of several physicians. Agamede was cited by Homer as a healer in ancient Greece before the Trojan War. Agnodice was the first female physician to practice legally in 4th century BC Athens. Metrodora was a physician and generally regarded as the first female medical writer.^[3] Her book, On the Diseases and Cures of Women, was the oldest medical book written by a female and was referenced by many other female physicians. She credited much of her writings to the ideologies of Hippocrates.

Medieval Europe

During the Middle Ages, convents were a centralized place of education for women, and some of these communities provided opportunities for women to contribute to scholarly research. An example is the German abbess Hildegard of Bingen, whose prolific writings include treatments of various scientific subjects, including medicine, botany and natural history (c. 1151–58). She is considered Germany’s first female physician.

Women in the Middle Ages participated in healing techniques and several capacities in medicine and medical education. Women occupied select ranks of medical personnel during the period. They worked as herbalists, midwives, surgeons, barber-surgeons, nurses, and traditional empirics. Women healers treated most patients, not limiting themselves to treating solely women. The names of 24 women described as surgeons in Naples, Italy between 1273 and 1410 have been recorded, and references have been found to 15 women practitioners, most of them Jewish and none described as midwives, in Frankfurt, Germany between 1387 and 1497.

Women also engaged in midwifery and healing arts without having their activities recorded in written records, and practiced in rural areas or where there was little access to medical care. Society in the Middle Ages limited women’s role as physician. Once universities established faculties of medicine during the thirteenth century, women were excluded from advanced medical education. Licensure began to require clerical vows for which women were ineligible, and healing as a profession became male-dominated.

In many occasions, women had to fight against accusation of illegal practice done by males, putting into question their motives. If they were not accused of malpractice, then women were considered „witches“ by both clerical and civil authorities.^[9] Surgeons and barber-surgeons were often organized into guilds, they could hold out longer against the pressures of licensure. Like other guilds, a number of the barber-surgeon guilds allowed the daughters and wives of their members to take up membership in the guild, generally after the man’s death. Katherine la surgiene of London, daughter of Thomas the surgeon and sister of William the Surgeon belonged to a guild in 1286. Documentation of female members in the guilds of Lincoln, Norwich, Dublin and York continue until late in the period.

Midwives, those who assisted pregnant women through childbirth and some aftercare, included only women. Midwives constituted roughly one third of female medical practitioners. Men did not involve themselves in women’s medical care; women did not involve themselves in men’s health care. The southern Italian coastal town of Salerno was a center of medical education and practice in the 12th century. In Salerno the physician Trota of Salerno compiled a number of her medical practices in several written collections. One work on women’s medicine that was associated with her, the De curis mulierum („On Treatments for Women“) formed the core of what came to be known as the Trotula ensemble, a compendium of three texts that circulated throughout medieval Europe. Trota herself gained a reputation that spread as far as France and England. There are also references in the writings of other Salernitan physicians to the mulieres Salernitane („Salernitan women“), which give some idea of local empirical practices.

Dorotea Bucca, an Italian physician, was chair of philosophy and medicine at the University of Bologna for over forty years from 1390. Other Italian women whose contributions in medicine have been recorded include Abella, Jacqueline Felice de Almania, Alessandra Giliani, Rebecca de Guarna, Margarita, Mercuriade (14th century), Constance Calenda, Clarice di Durisio (15th century), Constanza, Maria Incarnata and Thomasia de Mattio.