Opleiding en carriè van de tweede generatie vrouwelijke artsen in Nederland

Abstract

The training and careers of the second generation of women doctors in the Netherlands This article analyses the training and careers of the 'second generation' of women doctors in the Netherlands, and compares them with the pioneering generation, the thirteen who qualified before 1900. Women were comparatively late and slow to enter medicine in Holland, but there was a major increase in the number of women practising after 1900, and particularly after 1910. Education opportunities remained relatively stable after 1900 - there was no backlash or setting up of barriers against women's training as in Great Britain and America - but women following their personal experiences came to favour some universities more than others, and Utrecht in particular saw a decline in popularity between 1920 and 1930. Career opportunities also remained in broad terms stable, though restricted, as demonstrated by a comparison of the employment of women doctors in Amsterdam in the years 1915 and 1930. Women opted for the same areas, often linked to the care of women and children, general practice, public health and preventive medicine, and the specialisms of paediatrics and gynaecology. In the latter field there was considerable opposition to women's practice as gynaecology became more surgically oriented, but this was paralleled by a growth in opportunities in preventive medicine. The question as to whether the channelling of women doctors' energies in certain directions was something imposed by contemporaries and their view of women's capabilities and qualities must remain open. But it seems choices were made by women doctors themselves based on their notions of their strengths and special abilities.