Patriarchy and Medicine: A Woman Medical Missionary in the Colonial Punjab

Résumé fourni par la source

My paper seeks to explore the wide-ranging influence of institutionalized patriarchy and its ideology in constructing and strengthening gendered notions of science particularly medicine in Britain, Europe and United States especially during the First and Second World Wars.Even after the end of these wars and return of peace, women continued to be relegated to the domestic arena despite their conspicuous medical roles.Dubbed as sexualized bodies with inferior intellectual abilities, they continued to be denied admission in medical colleges and jobs.My argument shall be illustrated with examples from women's struggles for medical education in the imperialist countries and the colonized countries namely India.The processes were complex and different in each terrain depending upon the dynamics of cultural and nationalist forces.In the course of discussion, debates regarding women's struggle for medical education and for equal status as full-fledged missionaries and professional identity as institution-builders, surgeons and gynecologists shall figure in.It shall include references to the rabid hostility of their male colleagues and students.The story of Christian Medical College in Ludhiana (Punjab, India), founded and nourished by a Baptist missionary, Edith Brown, provides the best example of the tension between misogynist notions of women's intellectual caliber and their success as medical doctors, professional surgeons and administrators during periods of crisis such as wars and massacres during the partition of Punjab (1947).Their success, though partial, in modernizing notions of disease and women's health, has long-term implications for medical traditions in India.

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