Continuing our deep dive into the history of the RCSI Biological Society (check out last month’s BioSoc post for LGBT+ History Month), we’re flying the flag for the first women of BioSoc this International Women’s Day.
The RCSI Biological Society (BioSoc) is the official student society of RCSI and one of the oldest student medical societies in the world.
Women have been consistently well-represented in successive BioSoc Committees since its inception in the 1930s. The Society appointed its first female President - Dr Margaret (Pearl) Dunleavy - in 1951. Two decades earlier, the opening paper presented at the first Inaugural Meeting in Feb 1932 – on a case of Henoch-Schonlein purpura - was read by a woman, Miss Johnson, prompting a formal note of thanks to be entered in the minutes 'for allowing a woman to read the first paper.'
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Intellectually pioneering
As was the case with discussions of sex and sexuality, BioSoc offered an unusually open and progressive forum for topics considered taboo within mainstream and medical communities in the 1940s.
Long before contraception became a subject of mainstream debate in Irish society the 1970s, a paper on the subject of birth control prompted lively discussion among BioSoc members when it was presented at a meeting in January 1945.
Peripheral references to the challenge of birth control for women arise in discussions relating to other BioSoc papers before this point (a response to a 1943 paper titled ‘An Aristotelian Approach to Medicine’ on the relationship between mind and body cited the case of a woman who developed asthma as a protective mechanism against further childbirth). However, ‘Birth Control: Social and Moral Aspects’ was the first time this topic had been addressed head-on in a BioSoc paper.
In considering what was indeed a most controversial subject for its time – socially, morally, and, not least, politically (contraception was illegal in Ireland from 1935 to 1979) - BioSoc must be applauded for sustaining this discussion of birth control on largely factual and evidence-based grounds using statistical data and scientific literature.
Rather than veering into the realm of moral judgement, the paper reflects contemporary concerns about the societal impact of birth control, citing data from the US regarding the effect of birth control in terms of declining birth rates and increased instances of divorce in childless couples. Even the questionable assertion that ‘a woman reaches her peak of development and health after the second or third birth’ is attributed to the idea that ‘most writers are agreed’ on this statement.
Socially conformist
Despite the progressive nature of intellectual and scholarly debate within BioSoc during this period and the consistently strong contributions of women to these discussions, the social order of the BioSoc Committee was decidedly of its time. At a meeting in November 1946 it was decided that the women on the Council should form a Ladies Committee to look after the catering for each meeting and ‘to buy extra cups to add to the Society’s twenty cups and saucers’.
For their part, the ‘ladies’ in question, of whom there were three on the Committee at this time - Misses Dickinson (Hon Treasurer), Matthews, and McQuaid (Hon Rec Secretary) - raised no obvious objections to the decision. Interestingly, however, they were equally keen that a precedent not be set on more important matters.
Asked whether she would like to propose a vote of thanks on behalf of the ladies on the Committee to the outgoing President at a subsequent meeting in 1949, Miss McQuaid – now in her final year of studies and about to graduate - appears to have stood her ground more firmly. Tea-making may have been a battle, but gender equality was ultimately the war - ‘it was decided by the council that there should be no differentiation between male and female members of the council in regards the business of the Biological Society.’
So it continues today.