Women’s work – the handmade history of physiotherapy

Last week, we had the first meeting of executive of the new International Physiotherapy History Association (IPHA), and one of the items on the agenda was a proposal to host a Focused Symposium on physiotherapy history at next year’s WCPT Congress in Geneva.

We’ve got some fabulous ideas for topics, including possible talks on the history of non-medical prescribing, the roots of manual therapy, the German gymnastic movement in 1920s and 30s,and the history of needling therapies.  Thinking about a theme that ties them together has been an interesting process.

Physiotherapy’s longstanding affinity with biomedicine might well win out, but an equally powerful discourse running through these talks is the way gender issues have influenced the profession.

2018 commemorates 100 years since the signing of the Representation of the People Act, which granted some British women (and more men) the right to vote.  Sheila Rowbotham’s excellent Rebel Crossings offers a great account of this, and commemorates the significant victories achieved by many in the name of women’s suffrage.

We often don’t realise quite how important women’s suffrage was to the founding of physiotherapy in Britain, and how this shaped the model of the profession around the world in the coming decades.

All of the founders of the Society of Trained Masseuses (STM) were independent women with ties to the suffrage movement.  Rosalind Paget, one of the founders of the Society and a pioneer of the midwifery profession in Britain, was drawn, with her friends in the Midwives’ Institute, ‘from the same class background and had close friendship and family ties with the leaders of the women’s movement and with those who took an interest in social welfare issues’ (Hannan, 1997, p.84).  Rosalind Paget – later Dame Rosalind Paget – was a niece of William Rathbone (1819-1902), the influential Member of Parliament, philanthropist, and close friend of Florence Nightingale.  And Paget was also cousin to prominent suffragette Eleanor Rathbone (1872-1946).

There have been many times in the history of physiotherapy where its women leaders battled against almost overwhelming misogyny: in fighting to legitimise their massage practices; in showing they could treat injured servicemen; in becoming the leaders of physical rehabilitation movement; and differentiating themselves from nursing and midwifery.

And still to this day, female healthcare professionals are less likely to be in management roles; more likely to in low-paid supporting roles; more likely to be held back from promotion if they take career breaks to have families; and significantly more likely to experience harassment and bullying in the workplace.

In recent years, physiotherapy scholars have paid a lot more attention to the gendered aspects of the profession.  So perhaps 2018 affords us an opportunity to celebrate the remarkable women who made it possible for us all to be here today, and to remind ourselves that the battle for women’s suffrage has not yet been won.

References

Barclay J. (1994).  In good hands: The history of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy 1894-1994. Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann.

Hannam J. (1997). Rosalind Paget. The midwife, the women’s movement and reform before 1914: In: Marland H, Rafferty AM. Midwives, society and childbirth: Debates and controversies in the modern period. Routledge: London.