Abstract
This thesis examines the experience of women in veterinary training and work, from 1919 until the present day. Structured chronologically in order to highlight continuity and change, it looks at the reasons women were drawn to a career as a veterinary surgeon, and what factors influenced their ability to access veterinary school and the veterinary workplace. Presented as a prosopography, it utilises a range of sources, including personal testimony, to recover traces of women’s opinions, aspirations, attitudes and agency in a profession that remained overwhelmingly male until the late twentieth century. In this way, it uses gender as a lens to open up new perspectives on the structures, working practices and conditions of veterinary medicine.By offering a longitudinal study, this research brings new insights into the experience of professional women in the twentieth century. It focuses on women in the private sector to demonstrate how their experiences diverged from their contemporaries in the public sector, with a particular focus on the business aspect of veterinary medicine. It also demonstrates how notions of sexual difference were constructed within the profession and how, in the absence of complex bureaucratic or hierarchical structures, they survived into the twenty-first century. By examining this issue, and by transcending the classic demarcation between the disciplines of history and sociology, this thesis brings historical analysis to bear on the current issue of the ‘feminisation’ of the professions.
| Date of Award | 1 Mar 2016 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Supervisor | Abigail Woods (Supervisor), Patricia Thane (Supervisor) & Clare Boulton (Supervisor) |