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

by Unknown

The remuneration varies roughly between £250 and £500 a year, with house but no carriage allowance. The doctor is entitled to add to her salary by private practice. In some towns this is a considerable item, whereas in others it is quite negligible. There is no definite furlough allowance, and the doctor may be removed from her post and required to keep herself on very little for a considerable period of time before being appointed to another hospital. All this causes a severe drain on the resources of doctors without private means. The staff is also frequently inefficient, and the nursing is sometimes very indifferent, being undertaken by Eurasian girls under partly trained women who have never been "home."

In the practice of medicine as in all other branches of women's labour, the question of the effect of marriage upon work is a very important and difficult one. In its general aspect it lies at the very heart of the whole question of the working woman. Its effect on the medical woman varies according to the branch of her profession which she selects. If she wishes to become (a) a specialist or (b) a general practitioner, she has perfect freedom of choice as to what she will do in the event of marriage; and some women retire while others continue their work. The latter is a much more desirable course from the point of view of medical women as a whole. The medical woman who is married can, better than any one else, render to society certain services in her profession, and it is desirable that these should not be lost. In any event no woman need retire from her work on marriage, though it is, of course, most important that the married medical woman should not deny to herself and to her husband the normal healthy joy of having children. To continue in practice, however, while bearing a child requires a certain amount of expenditure, as such a doctor will need to retire from practice for at least two or three months, probably longer, and is therefore put to the expense of engaging a locum tenens. This ought, however, to be possible when both husband and wife are earning incomes.

From the point of view of society as a whole, it is waste that any one who has had such a long and arduous training as that required for the medical profession should not use it in service to the community. There is a form of selfishness not sufficiently recognised, which consists not in acquiring goods but in acquiring knowledge without rendering it again in service to one's fellow men and women.

Should the doctor decide (c) to enter the public service, the question will probably not be in her own control as there is an ever-increasing tendency on the part of public authorities to insist on single women or widows only among the medical women whom they employ. There is a big fight to be waged here—one of the many that our pioneers have left for us and our successors. The lack of social instinct which lies behind this edict is amazing. What can be more anti-social than that a young, healthy, and highly-trained woman should have to decide between marriage and executing that public work for which she has with great labour fitted herself? In at least some cases of which the writer is aware, the demand that a doctor shall retire on marriage, has led to a decision against matrimony, and this is not surprising, although very serious as a general problem. The great need of society at the present day is that the most healthy and well-trained young men and women should be induced to found families, and public authorities by this bar put on the trained woman, are doing their best to hinder marriage.

Medical women have, for their protection, societies of registered medical women in London and in the north of England and also in Scotland, these working more or less in touch with one another. In common with other medical societies they have meetings at which the advances in medical science are discussed, and they also act in a modified way as Trade Unions, Members of these societies can always gain information from them as to the recognised rate of pay in any particular branch of the work which they may wish to undertake.

Reference has already been made to the excellent work which has been done by the British Medical Association in uniting the men and women of the profession and helping both to keep up the salary rate. Without this aid the women's associations would have been comparatively helpless, as they would have erred in ignorance, though certainly not by intention. The gratitude of medical women to this association cannot therefore be overstated, and I think I am justified in saying that the same is true with regard to medical men. If their chief "Union" had not admitted women we might unwittingly have become a danger to our medical colleagues as black-leg labour. This has been almost universally the case in other work which women have taken up, and one cannot help wishing that men in other branches of labour might speedily realise the fact that women cannot be stopped from working, and that the only wise thing, from the men's point of view as well as from the women's, is to admit all to their unions that they may fight shoulder to shoulder for better labour conditions, and not against each other. An example of a case where this was realised has already been quoted under Example 2, page 144.

With regard to the opportunities for post-graduate study:—At first all the men's medical societies were closed to women, the provincial societies being among the first to recognise their women medical colleagues. London, being in this as in all things conservative, took many years to move, and did so very grudgingly; but now nearly all the important medical societies admit women, in this falling into line with the learned professions generally. The Royal Medical Society, London, at first admitted women to its separate sections only, while denying them the Fellowship, with which would have gone that mysterious power which men so deeply resent our possessing—the power to vote on matters of its internal economy. The authorities of this society have, however, recently admitted medical women on perfectly equal terms with men to their Fellowship—a privilege for which we are deeply grateful, as post-graduate knowledge of recent investigations is absolutely essential to good work.

In conclusion, the general position of medical women at present may be shortly summarised as follows:—

Their legal status is absolutely identical with that of men in every respect, by which is meant that by being placed upon the Medical Register they have every privilege, duty, and responsibility which they would have if they were men. In obtaining this and allowing many other things to be settled by their successors our pioneers showed their tremendous wisdom.

We have in the medical profession, what women are now claiming in the State, the abolition of legal sex disqualification. With this firm platform upon which to stand, it entirely depends upon medical women themselves what position they will gain in their profession. All other disabilities and disqualifications are minor and remediable.