Women Workers in Seven Professions / A Survey of Their Economic Conditions and Prospects

by Unknown

As the agitation increased, the efforts of these pioneers to obtain a qualifying course for women in Edinburgh, were supported by a committee of sympathisers, which speedily rose to five hundred members, and, after a severe struggle, the question of clinical teaching in the Infirmary was settled partially in the women's favour in 1872. Later, the question of the validity of the original resolutions admitting women to the University was raised and decided against them. They had, therefore, been four years at the University and were finally excluded. This, however, proved to be only temporary as, in later years, the University reopened its medical degrees to women; but not in time to allow of the return of these courageous pioneers.

In the meantime Dr Garrett Anderson, having taken her degree in Paris, had been steadily working in London, forming the nucleus of the present New Hospital for Women, and the pioneers from Edinburgh came to London and helped her to start a school of medicine for women.

This was successfully accomplished owing to the kind help of many people, both within and without the profession, but no clinical teaching could be obtained, as all the big London hospitals were closed to women students. Finally, however, arrangements were made with the Royal Free Hospital in Gray's Inn Road. It had no men's medical school attached to it, and the admission of women to the hospital was due to the kind intervention of the Rt. Hon. J. Stansfeld, M.P., who met the Chairman of the hospital, Mr James Hopgood, while away on a holiday, and induced him to persuade the hospital authorities to give the dangerous experiment a trial. So seriously was it regarded, that the women students had to guarantee an indemnity to the hospital of 300 guineas annually in addition to their fees, as it was felt that the general support might decrease by, at least, this amount when the public became aware that there were medical women studying at the hospital! This was soon found not to be the case, and the yearly indemnity was generously remitted by the hospital authorities, the students simply paying the usual fees for instruction. In connection with this subject, it may be of interest to note that to-day the presence of medical women at the hospital is evidently found by the authorities to be an important means of gaining the sympathy of the general public, for appeals for funds may frequently be seen in London omnibuses stating, as the ground for an appeal, the fact that this is the only general hospital in London where women medical students are trained.

The medical school which began in a small Georgian house has now a fine block of buildings with all modern appliances, and the hospital is, at the time that this book goes to press, undergoing extensive alterations and additions, including enlargement of the students' quarters.

The success of this pioneer work has been sufficiently amazing, but it is most important that every one should realise that the fight is still going on. Not a day passes but somebody tries to get medical women to work either for less pay or under less honourable conditions than those required by their medical brethren, and one of the most trying parts of work in this profession at the present time is the constant alertness required both for detecting and defeating these attempts. That they should be made is not surprising, when we remember the lower market value attached to women's work in almost every other occupation. Practical examples of the sort of attempts made, may be of service.

Example 1.—A medical woman went as locum tenens for a practitioner in a country town during the South African War. The practitioner himself was at the time absolutely incapacitated by a severe form of influenza, complicated by ocular neuralgia which made work absolutely impossible. Owing to the War, he was quite unable to get a man to act as locum tenens. A woman consented to help him in his extremity, at considerable inconvenience both to herself and to the people with whom she was working at the time. She carried on the practice during the depth of the winter, having on some occasions to go out in the snow-sleigh and frequently to drive in an open trap at night in the deadly cold. She carried on the work with such conspicuous success that her "chief" asked her to stay on as his assistant when he was convalescent. For this he offered her £85 a year, living in, saying, without any shame, that he knew that this was not the price that any man would command, but that it was plenty for a woman. He was bound to admit that he had lost no patient through her, that he charged no lower fees when she went to a case than when he did, that she did half the work while acting as his assistant, and that she had kept his practice together for him while he was ill. Fortunately, owing to the fact that she had behind her means of subsistence without her salary, she was able to refuse his unsatisfactory offer, although at considerable violence to her feelings, for she had made many friends in the neighbourhood.

Example 2.—A husband and wife, both medical, went to settle in a town in the north of England. They both practised, the qualifications of both were excellent, but the woman was the more brilliant of the two, having better degrees and more distinctions. Both applied to be admitted to the local medical society. The man was, of course, accepted, the woman refused on the score of her sex, this meaning that she would be cut off from all opportunity of hearing medical papers and discussing medical subjects with her colleagues. During the next few months a local friendly society was anxious to obtain a medical officer and was offering terms regarded as insufficient by the local doctors. Among others approached by this society was the medical woman in question. Directly the officials of the medical society, which had banned her when her own benefit was concerned, heard that she had been approached by the friendly society, they elected her without asking her consent to the very society from which they had previously excluded her, in order that she might be unable to take the post in question, whereby they might have financially suffered.

Example 3.—The exclusion from medical societies referred to under Example 2, like many similar actions in life, tends to recoil on its instigators. For instance, a medical woman in another northern town applied for and accepted a post which the local men had decided was unsatisfactory in some particulars, and for which therefore none of them had applied. They were loud in their denunciations of the woman in question, but owing to the fact that her men colleagues had not recognised her professionally in other ways, she was quite unaware of her offence for several months after undertaking her new duties.

Example 4.—Men and women are sometimes appointed on apparently equal terms and conditions to posts which are not, however, really equal, in that there is a chance of promotion for the men but none for the women.

Example 5.—In another town in the north of England men and women appointed to do the work of school medical inspection on equal terms recently considered that they were not sufficiently remunerated. They met and decided that they would together apply for better terms. A rumour was then set abroad that the authority under whom they worked would certainly not consider such an increase in expenditure. In this crisis the men on the staff, although they had so far joined with their women colleagues in sending up their petition, sent up another of their own, without informing or consulting the women at all, in which they said that they considered it was time that this equality of remuneration for both sexes should cease. They begged the authority to neglect their public appeal, but to grant instead increased remuneration to the men, and the men only. One of the reasons given for this suggestion on the part of the men was that their liabilities were greater. The result of enquiry, however, proved that of the three men, one only was engaged to be married, the other two had no one dependent upon them; whereas of the three women, two were supporting other people—one being a married woman separated from her husband and with two children to support and educate.