Women p hysicians as Vital intermediaries in colonial Bombay (original) (raw)
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Women Question and Public Health Administration in Colonial Bengal, 1880s–1940s
Indian Historical Review, 2024
Is it possible for medical practitioners to complete their professional training and pursue their careers without understanding the history of public health? The evolution of public health over time holds significant implications for the appropriate responses to modern-day challenges in public health practice. The article emphasises the changing nature of healthcare practices in the late years of the Raj and draws attention to the growth of public health administration and its impact on women’s health. The last two decades of the nineteenth century witnessed debates and discussions on disseminating health education among women through different agencies. There was a noticeable growth of voluntary associations devoted to maternal and child health care. Not only the Dufferin Fund but also different philanthropic organisations set up by British elite women and thus closely connected to the colonial state like the Lady Reading Fund, Lady Chelmsford Fund, and so on, became involved in providing professional training for Indian women in medicine (doctors, hospital assistants, midwives, nurses, health visitors, etc.), establishing hospitals and dispensaries dedicated to women and children in the urban and rural areas, organising healthcare activities for them (baby shows and welfare exhibition), among others. The proceedings of these voluntary associations, journals like the Indian Medical Gazette, government reports on the subject, along with the archival documents help to understand how the women’s healthcare issues were addressed by different agencies (colonial state, medical practitioners and philanthropic organisations) through educational and medical interventions between the 1880s and the 1940s
In colonial India, medicalization of childbirth has been historically perceived as an attempt to ‘sanitise’ the zenana (secluded quarters of a respectable household inhabited by women) as the chief site of birthing practices and to replace the dhais (traditional birth attendants ) with trained midwives and qualified female doctors. This thesis has taken a broader view of the subject but in doing so, focusses on Bengal as the geographical area of study. It has argued that medicalization of childbirth in Bengal was preceded by the reconstitution of midwifery as an academic subject and a medical discipline at the Calcutta Medical College. The consequence was the gradual ascendancy of professionalized obstetrics that prioritised research, surgical intervention and ‘surveillance’ over women’s bodies. The thesis also shows how the medicalization of childbirth was supported by the reformist and nationalist discourses of the middle-class Bengalis in the late nineteenth and early twentieth c...
POLITICS OF CHILDBIRTH: POSITION OF MIDWIVES IN COLONIAL INDIA -BY JAHANVI JHA
IJMRRS, 2024
Across several decades, women's bodies have symbolized societal honor and demarcated the boundaries between "us" and the "other." Various familial, societal, and state mechanisms have been employed to manipulate and regulate women's bodies, particularly in the context of their reproductive capabilities. The medical community, wielding significant authority, has played a pivotal role in this phenomenon, particularly evident in its influence over women's bodies and childbirth. This complex interplay becomes apparent when examining the evolving role of "dhai"
Dufferin Hospital, Calcutta, had led to their dismissal. 10 Decisions regarding medical staff were more convoluted. Many local bodies keen to open dispensaries, hospitals or wards for women did not have sufficient resources to employ women doctors, especially as special living arrangements had to be made for British or American women doctors, and because they expected higher salaries and regular furloughs. 11 Questions about the medical staff of women's hospitals were at the heart of the AMWI's campaign in the first decade of its formation.
Vicissitudes of Female Medical Education in Bengal/India -Kadambini Revisited
Doctors' Dialogue, 2023
At present, medicine connects with the economy by various and different routes. Not simply in so far as it is capable of reproducing the work force, but also in that it can directly produce wealth in that health is a need for some and a luxury for others. Health becomes a consumer object, which can be produced by pharmaceutical laboratories, doctors, etc., and consumed by both potential and actual patients. As such, it has acquired economic and market value. "Thus the human body has been brought twice over into the market: first by people selling their capacity to work, and second, through the intermediary of health. Consequently, the human body once again enters an economic market as soon as it is susceptible to diseases and health, to well being or to malaise, to joy or to pain, and to the extent that it is the object of sensations, desires, etc. As soon as the human body enters the market, through health consumption, various phenomena appear which lead to dysfunctions in the contemporary system of health and medicine." This paper deals with vicissitudes of female medical education in Bengal/India. And emphasizes on the attainments of Kadambini Ganguly as the first female doctor passing out from an Indian institution.
Women in Modern Medicine in India: Progression, Contribution, Challenges and Empowerment
Australasian Accounting, Business and Finance Journal
Womens' representation in most of the professions in India was been dismally low before the country gained independence. This can be attributed to the customs and traditions which have been in vogue through the centuries. Women's accepted role within the confines of the home and seclusion from males other than the family members were two reasons which contributed to women not being part of many professions. Medicine as a profession reflected this and thus the representation of women in medicine was insignificant in the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries. However certain measures during the period began the process of entry of women into the profession. Opening of medical colleges and schools was an important step, although women were allowed to join in meagre numbers. Later, medical colleges only for women opened, which forced other medical colleges to admit women. This was because of the setting aside of special funds by the government for this cause and the role of women missionaries who believed it a moral duty to induct women into the medical profession in order to better serve women patients. These factors were helpful for women trying to get a foothold in the profession. The pioneering efforts of a few women doctors added impetus to this activity. It can be said with pride that there may now be more women than men enrolled in medical colleges. There are still challenges such as the unequal representation of women in all disciplines, but to change this will require a change in the mind set of Indian society rather than the enacting of any law. Empowerment of women is a widely researched topic, and this study differs country wise and profession wise from other studies. It can be presumed that the medical profession, because of its inherent characteristics, is looked upon as a noble profession and thus it might be expected to lead other professions in empowerment. The present paper traces the medical profession through the last two centuries in relation to women and the challenges faced by them. It highlights the contributions of some prominent personalities and discusses how empowered the women doctors feel who are residing in the Delhi National Capital Region (NCR). The result on empowerment reveals positivity in many aspects, but certain areas still need to improve. Further measures by the government and changes in societal patterns would be beneficial.
Medical careers and health care for indian women: patterns of control
Women's History Review, 1994
In the 1880s reform-minded men and women in Great Britain had joined the missionaries and a number of Indian reformers in demanding that Western medical care be extended to Indian women. The subjects of their concern were high-status Indian women who observed the norms of seclusion. British women, at this time entering the medical profession, supported this initiative because it legitimized their professional goals and promised employment. This paper explores the introduction of medical care for Indian women with reference to the life of Dr Haimavati Sen (c.1867-1932), lady doctor in charge of an exclusively womens hospital in Hughli district of Bengal. The paper explores two issues: the ways in which imperialism, feminism, and racism worked to marginalize Indian women in professional medical roles and the impact of this process upon women as patients and clients.
In His Service For Her Health: Women Missionary Doctors in Colonial India
Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences: Journal of The Inter-University Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences, Vol. XVIII, Number 1, Summer 2021, 2021
Modern notions of gender and sexuality have been defined and asserted in the colonial discourses which portrayed Europe as the masculinist colonizer exercising control over a feminized Orient. Ideas of a hypersexual, unhygienic, and simple-minded oriental subject informed colonial policies on health, taxation, urban and economic planning. In this colonial context, women’s private spaces and their bodies became sites of study, social reform, and philanthropy. This essay studies this intersection and interaction between medicine, gender and colonialism in women’s healthcare provided in the newly emerging women’s hospitals and in the zenanas in the early 20th century. It focuses on the quotidian realities of women’s hospitals in colonial India. This essay also, by employing a feminist reading of personal records of women as doctors, nurses, and patients, seeks to understand how individual medical encounters can be used in writing intimate histories of medicine and in re- conceptualizing women’s spaces as sites of knowledge production.
Creative Space
One of the notable advancements of late 19th-early 20th century British India was the introduction of ‘western-style’ medical care for women. Located within confines of the colonial or princely enclaves, a number of women’s hospitals, staffed with trained British female doctors, were established under the Dufferin Fund. But the benefits of medicalised childbirth did not extend to commonplace Indian women. At this point of time, history was also made by certain philanthropic and nationalist individuals who made some pioneering efforts to extend benefits of medicalised childbirth to the vast neglected body of commonplace Indian women.The 48-bedded Banarsi Dass Hospital for Women, built in 1922 within the dense urban fabric of Ambala Cantonment, is one of the earliest of such pioneering structures. The architectural value of the building as seen in its ingenious spatial organization was devised to ensure generous access to sun and air, ensured thermal comfort in all seasons, a construc...