When the Personal Was Political: Five Women Doctors Look Back

By Toni Martin

Book Overview

When the Personal was Political is the first social history of the post-feminist generation of women doctors, told through the story of five women who met in the freshman class of UCSF medical school in 1973, formed a study group for mutual support, and maintained their friendships for thirty years, weathering motherhood and managed care. Feminism opened the door, and they walked through, clueless but committed. They were a unique group, sandwiched between the individual women pioneers of previous decades who were proud to "think like men" and the women students of today who take access to professional school for granted. The pioneers were the scouts in the male-dominated profession; this generation was the landing party. The book raises the question, "What does it mean to be a 'woman doctor' if 'a doctor' is a man?" Despite the greater numbers of women in medicine today, women medical students still face choices (pediatrics or surgery?) where gender matters. Dr. Martin's thoughtful analysis combines an insider perspective and a lively writing style.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0595487262
• ISBN13: 9780595487264
• Release Date: March 2008
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Length: 180 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

WHAT A TRUE BOOK

This book highlights the cultural no-mans land career women inhabit when they dare to aspire to a successful professional career and family life. I had chills during certain chapters when my experiences in the veterinary field 20 years late were eerie similar to the authors. What a great book

When the Personal was Political

Excellent narrative of what it's like to become and to be a female physician in what is still "a man's world". Shows the importance of supportive and understanding like-minded classmates and women friends, our "girl friends".

Incisive documentation of women's history

Toni Martin has written a remarkable and incisive book that uses qualitative research techniques - auto-ethnography, participant observation, and informant interviews - to produce an insider's analysis of the lives and work of women doctors who entered medical school at the crest of second wave feminism in the early 1970s. Part memoir, part life history, her book does what any good formal ethnography does - it illuminates an important aspect of the general by focusing tightly on the particular. In this case, the specifics are her life and the lives of four friends, her medical school study group, and their experiences in the world of American medicine as women and as doctors (or as Martin wryly acknowledges, that distinct species, women doctors). The general insight this analysis provides for us pertains to the state of women's lives and women workers in 21st century America. Reading the experiences of a group of the most privileged and well educated women helps us to understand how far our society still has to go to achieve the goal of equity; if this is what happens to those at the top of the heap, what does that tell us about those closer to the bottom? I recommend this book for classes in medical anthropology, medical sociology and women's studies. I would teach it alongside Arlie Hochschild's The Managed Heart, Melvin Konner's Becoming A Doctor, and Martin's earlier work, the classic How To Survive Medical School. I recommend it for pleasure reading as it is an elegant and crisp piece of prose that reads like a great "page-turner." Martin's medicine is easy to swallow.