The ‘Medical-Women Question’ and the multivocality of the Victorian medical press, 1869-1900

Journal article

From the late 1860s to 1900s, the British medical press was preoccupied by debates about the suitability and propriety of women studying and practising medicine. Rather than presenting a unitary or fixed opinion on the ‘medical-women question’, however, the journals illustrate divisions and dissent. Editorial opinions on the matter—expressed in leading articles and news coverage—were often strident, but were also revised and even reversed in later issues. Discussions of the medical-women movement also featured elsewhere in the journals, in transcripts of debates among professional bodies and correspondence pages. This enabled a range of individuals—professionals and laypeople, men and women, supporters and detractors—to participate in the conversation. The journals engaged with a spectrum of opinions, which reveal much about professional anxieties and attitudes towards women during this period. The medical press did not simply reflect contemporary values, however. Rather its multivalent form actively engendered debates about women in medicine.

Authors: Moulds, ASE

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Routledge
• Journal: Media History
• Volume: 25
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 6-22
• Publication date: 2018-07-25
• Acceptance date: 2017-11-24
• DOI: 10.1080/13688804.2018.1482202
• EISSN: 1469-9729
• ISSN: 1368-8804
• Keywords: medicine; nineteenth-century periodical press; gender; British Empire; women