Witches, Midwives, and Nurses A History of Women Healers - Barbara Ehrenreich

"Women have always been healers. They were the unlicensed doctors and anatomists of western history. They were abortionists, nurses and counsellors. They were pharmacists, cultivating healing herbs and exchanging the secrets of their uses. They were midwives, travelling from home to home and village to village. For centuries women were doctors without degrees, barred from books and lectures, learning from each other, and passing on experience from neighbor to neighbor and mother to daughter. They were called “wise women” by the people, witches or charlatans by the authorities. Medicine is part of our heritage as women, our history, our birthright."

" The suppression of female healers by the medical establishment was a political struggle, first, in that it is part of the history of sex struggle in general. The status of women healers has risen and fallen with the status of women When women healers were attacked, they were attacked as Women; when they fought back, they fought back in solidarity with all women."

- https://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/ehrenreich-barbara/witches.htm

Important concluding bullet points from the article:

- We have not been passive bystanders in the history of medicine. The present system was born in and shaped by the competition between male and female healers. The medical profession in particular is not just another institution which happens to discriminate against us: It is a fortress designed and erected to exclude us. This means to us that the sexism of the health system is not incidental, not just the reflection of the sexism of society in general or the sexism of individual doctors. It is historically older than medical science itself; it is deep-rooted, institutional sexism.

- Our enemy is not just “men” or their individual male chauvinism: It is the whole class system which enabled male, upper class healers to win out and which forced us into subservience. Institutional sexism is sustained by a class system which supports male power.

- There is no historically consistent justification for the exclusion of women from healing roles. Witches were attacked for being pragmatic, empirical and immoral. But in the 19th century the rhetoric reversed: Women became too unscientific, delicate and sentimental. The stereotypeschange to suit male convenience – we don’t, and there is nothing in our “innate feminine nature” to justify our present subservience.

- Men maintain their power in the health system through their monopoly of scientific knowledge. We are mystified by science, taught to believe that it is hopelessly beyond our grasp. In our frustration, we are sometimes tempted to reject science, rather than to challenge the men who hoard it. But medical science could be a liberating force, giving us real control over our own bodies and power in our lives as health workers. At this point in our history, every effort to take hold of and share medical knowledge is a critical part of the struggle – know-your-body courses and literature, self-help projects, counselling, women’s free clinics.

- Professionalism in medicine is nothing more than the institutionalization of a male upper class monopoly. We must never confuse professionalism with expertise. Expertise is something to work for and to share; professionalism is – by definition – elitist and exclusive, sexist, racist and classist. In the American past, women who sought formal medical training were too ready to accept the professionalism that went with it. They made their gains in status – but only on the backs of their less privileged sisters – midwives, nurses and lay healers. Our goal today should never be to open up the exclusive medical profession to women, but to open up medicine – to all women.

- This means that we must begin to break down the distinctions and barriers between women health workers and women consumers. We should build shared concerns: Consumers aware of women’s needs as workers, workers in touch with women’s needs as consumers. Women workers can play a leadership role in collective self-help and self-teaching projects, and in attacks on health institutions. But they need support and solidarity from a strong women’s consumer movement.

- Our oppression as women health workers today is inextricably linked to our oppression as women. Nursing, our predominate role in the health system, is simply a workplace extension of our roles as wife and mother. The nurse is socialized to believe that rebellion violates not only her “professionalism,” but her very femininity. This means that the male medical elite has a very special stake in the maintenance of sexism in the society at large: Doctors are the bosses in an industry where the workers are primarily women. Sexism in the society at large insures that the female majority of the health workforce are “good” workers – docile and passive. Take away sexism and you take away one of the mainstays of the health hierarchy.