In the 1880s reform-minded men and women in Great Britain had joined the missionaries and a number of Indian reformers in demanding that Western medical care be extended to Indian women. The subjects of their concern were high-status Indian women who observed the norms of seclusion.British women, at this time entering the medical profession, supported this initiative because it legitimized their professional goals and promised employment. This paper explores the introduction of medical care for Indian women with reference to the life of Dr Haimavati Sen (c.1867Sen (c. -1932, lady doctor in charge of an exclusively women s hospital in Hughli district of Bengal. The paper explores two issues: the ways in which imperialism, feminism, and racism worked to marginalize Indian women in professional medical roles and the impact of this process upon women as patients and clients. Missionaries had taken the lead in drawing the attention of the British Government of India to the medical needs of Indian women. British and American missionaries were the first to extend medical care to Indian women, but they were more successful in attracting lower caste/class women to their dispensaries and hospitals than in reaching higher status women who rarely ventured out of their houses.
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