The more things change, the more they stay the same. 

It’s fascinating to read the stories of female medics from more than a century ago. It’s depressing to recognise some of the same systemic impediments that still constrain today. 

Against The Odds: New Zealand’s First Women Doctors is a meticulously researched chronicle of Otago Medical School’s female alumni, dating from New Zealand’s first female medical student (Emily Siedeberg in 1891), till 1967, when a new medical school opened its doors in Auckland.

I myself am a graduate of that ‘new’ Auckland School of Medicine. Ensconced within those granite-grey walls of the Grafton campus, falling asleep in the library as I tried to memorise the Krebs cycle for the umpteenth time, I had little knowledge or appreciation of the pioneering medics on whose shoulders I stood.

This book is a timely and detailed record of the small but determined group of women who attended Otago Medical School, despite the prevailing wisdom that a woman’s only calling was to get married and have children. Many were graduates of Otago Girls’ High School - the ‘very first state secondary school for girls in the southern hemisphere,’ founded in 1871. OGHS students were invariably monied. Also, invariably white. Many had advocates in the form of parents and others who sluiced them towards a career in medicine. 

There is a lot of historical detail, and while this provides a wealth of data, it tends to make the narrative slightly dense.

Nonetheless, the stories are astounding; sheer craven chutzpah in the face of (largely male) animosity. Inside those brick and Ōamaru sandstone buildings, female medical students were ‘greeted with boos, whistles and stomping… ‘Women’s place is in the home’ [was] engraved into their desks.’ Before the lecture on reproductive organs, the professor would declare: ‘I now come to the part of my lectures that I refuse to give before women. Therefore, the women must leave the room, or I will leave.’

Emily Siedeberg used a horse and gig to make house calls, and built a reputation for never saying no when someone needed help: ‘day or night, hail, snow or storm, in good health or off-colour.’ Many female doctors were paid much less than their male counterparts, and sometimes worked for free. Alice Horsley offered to supervise a bubonic plague hospital in Auckland Domain; meanwhile, her male colleagues did not want such a ‘dangerous’ job. Kathleen Pih, a 1929 graduate, was the first Chinese and non-European woman medical graduate. She faced the double whammy of sexism and racism (patients at Ōamaru Hospital: ‘We are not going to stay here if that Chinese doctor comes’). I thought of the instances of bullying and ostracism in my own medical career, almost one hundred years later. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Perhaps the story that I found most resonant was that of Professor Cindy Farquhar, the co-author of this book. She taught us during my med school years, and at the time I thought of her as an articulate, affluent woman from the higher echelons of society. It was eye-opening to read of the different importance given to the careers of her medical father versus her medical mother, and how her mother’s life followed a trajectory of mental ill-health and alcoholism, due at least in part to domestic violence and an unplanned pregnancy. I tautoko you, Cindy, for your honesty; peoples’ stories are so meaningful.

This book reverberates with the bravery and tireless work ethic of extraordinary women in the face of absurd levels of prejudice and misogyny. Recognising that the past is still present should help us not to repeat mistakes, in an endless Krebs cycle of re-learning. Their stories also add deeper perspective to the frantic workload and crumbling edifice that is our modern-day New Zealand health system. 

Meanwhile, I’m ditching my car in favour of a horse and gig, in honour of the resilient wahine toa in this important historical book. 

Reviewed by Himali McInnes