11/02/2022
Today, Stemstars Africa is celebrating the International Day of Women and Girls in Science.
Here at Stemstars Africa, we're highlighting a remarkable woman by sharing her story as a reminder that STEM careers are not gender specific, challenge gender bias in STEM and inspire the next generation of women in STEM.
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Imagine a place where there is not a single female doctor.
You might be thinking of a poor country in a corner of the world, but this was the United States of America before 1849 when Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to receive a medical degree from an American medical school. And if you think about it, that was not too long ago, barely over 100 years.
Elizabeth was born in 1821 in Bristol England. Her father Samuel Blackwell and her mother Hannah Lane were active in the movement to end slavery. As a young girl, Elizabeth and her eight brothers and sisters had a very happy childhood. When Elizabeth was 11, her family moved to the United States of America. Although Samuel sugar business depended on slave labour, he tried to change the industry and even took all his children to anti-slavery meetings.
Her father died when Elizabeth was 17, but she and her siblings continued his work even though they no longer had any money. This experience would prove useful to Elizabeth that change is possible.
Elizabeth became a teacher and set up a school with her sisters so she can support herself financially and because she loved history. She was no one to consider herself a doctor because she wanted nothing to do with the human body which she found disgusting. But a remarkable event changed her mind and life completely when her dying close friend told her that she would not have suffered as much if her doctor had been a woman. Elizabeth was inspired to become a doctor but this was not going to be easy because no woman had ever done it before in America and most of the world. Back then in America, thousands of women worked as midwives and healers, but they were not formally trained or recognised as doctors as the medical world was a man's world and women were not welcomed.
Elizabeth was determined to change that. She applied to dozens of medical colleges and was rejected by all except one: Geneva Medical College (now Hobart and William Smith Collges) in New York. They took a bet on her because they were convinced that the male students would never allow a woman to join them so the college let them vote on whether she should be admitted or not. Believing it to be a prank, the students all voted yes and Elizabeth became the first female medical student in the United States.
In 1849, Elizabeth became the first woman to receive a medical degree in America.
Inspired by Elizabeth's success, more women in America and Europe decided to pursue a degree in medicine and become doctors. But despite that Elizabeth example showed what women can achieve, the gender stereotype that medicine is a male field and to get a job as a doctor you have to be a man did not change that much. In fact, all the medical schools in America kept their doors shut at the increasing number of women who applied to them.
Elizabeth travelled to work in clinics in London where she became friend with Florence Nightingale, and to Paris, France where to gain experience in obstetrics, despite finishing top of her class, she had to become a midwife.
Upon returning to New York, she set up her own practice because no one would hire a female doctor. Soon she was joined by her younger sister, Dr Emily Blackwell, and their friend Dr Marie Zakrzewska.
In 1868, realising the rejections women still received from medical schools, they opened the Medical College for Women in New York.
Returning to England with her adopted Irish orphan Kitty, Elizabeth set up another successful medical practice in London and founded the National Health Society to promote good hygiene, pioneering the belief that 'prevention is better than cure'. She promoted the power of simple hand-washing as she believed it could stop the spread of many diseases.
Elizabeth changed the way people saw women and the medical profession forever showing that talent is NOT a gender thing.
Images - Elizabeth's photo and the Medical College for Women
2022
