Elizabeth Ward reviews Against the Odds: New Zealand's first women doctors by Cynthia Farquhar and Michaela Selway:
‘AGAINST THE ODDS begins with a preface by co-author Cynthia Farquhar, which outlines her motivation for writing the book. She recounts how, upon the death of her father, a doctor, the Waikato Times and the New Zealand Medical Journal (NZMJ) both published obituaries. In contrast, when her mother, also a doctor, passed on, no such recognition was given. Unprompted, Farquhar wrote an obituary for her mother and submitted it to the NZMJ, which ultimately published it. Farquhar felt this experience highlighted the untold stories of women doctors, who, like her mother, had battled difficult circumstances to train and practise.
The preface sets the tone for the book, which primarily consists of short biographies of women doctors. The authors state in the introduction that their goal is to share experiences of what it was like to be a woman doctor. They cover the period from Emily Siedeberg – the first woman medical student who graduated in 1896 – up to 1967, just before the Auckland Medical School opened. They do not attempt to provide a comprehensive history of women doctors or their achievements. Instead, the book sets out to allow the stories and experiences of these pioneering women to [End Page 138] be recorded. The material draws on a larger project called ‘Early Medical Women of New Zealand’ (EMWoNZ), which is an on-going project to collect the stories of early women doctors. The general story of discrimination and struggle that women faced as doctors will be familiar to many. Yet hearing the different ways it affected the women who have told their stories adds a valuable dimension to the history of the women in the medical profession.
The book is largely chronological, with the chapters spanning six broad periods. There are also two topical chapters; one on students who were refugees from the Second World War, and one on graduates who contributed to medical research. Each chapter begins with historical context related to the period or subject being discussed. This is useful for general readers, and reminds those of us who are familiar with the historical milieu of the barriers that women faced in entering professional degrees and practising those professions. The historical context is followed by a series of short biographies of selected women who graduated during the period of the chapter. The structure of the book allows the reader to see the way that attitudes towards women doctors changed, with a growing acceptance of women in the profession. However, as the personal stories attest, these changes were not always linear – even by the end of the period studied, it was still a struggle for some women to justify their place in the medical world. The only flaw with the structure is some repetition in the context sections, while the biographies do not always fall neatly into the broad time periods or themes.’
Read the rest of the review here.
