The Oral Histories of Six Elderly Woman Doctors

• Main Authors: LIN YU-CHEN, 林郁禎
• Other Authors: Wang,YA-CO
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2005
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/95961682444358640437

碩士 === 國立臺北大學 === 社會學系 === 93 === The goal of this research is to understand the lives of woman doctors born in 1918 to 1928(aged 76~86) in Taiwan. Their personal characteristics, family and educational backgrounds as well as the challenges and outputs in their professional life in medical career were studied. I use in-depth interview to introduce the life history of these women doctors. The findings are summarized as follows: A. The reasons why they chose the medical profession: 1. Family background: All of six interviewees came from well-off families with healthy financial situation and superior financial. Many of their family members including father, grandfathers, and siblings were working in medical fields. They all have a open-minded father , who treated all his children impartially and gave an equal chance to the daughters. 2. Personal characteristics: The common characteristic of these women were more gifted in mathematics, this enables them to study in applied science. Because of their abilities in a variety of interests, they have had strong adaptability. They possess a strong sense of responsibility, leaded them to make good life planning and also because of their independence, and confidence made their self-opinioned and could be free from the traditional society. 3. Life experience and the importance of “the Significant others”: We discovered that the people around women doctors can affect their self-expectation, the choice of careers and the actual status in the society. Apart from the parents, teachers, friends, colleagues and other intimate relatives played important roles. 4. The educational environment: The educational system in different places and different times could influence one’s personal development. Though there were different growth background and the social conditions at that time, a description between genders and races in early days and war’s struggle of all those six women received complete education including preschool, elementary, middle, high school, and university. And almost all those are high standard. B. Women doctors career life. Women doctors face many difficulties in their lives including the hardship in education, competition in the work with man doctors, the bottleneck in their profession and dilemmas between family and career as well as life planning. Those are as follows 1. Competition in medical education: In medical education of earlier stage, women needed to face some degree of sexual and racial discrimination. But they actually, in such environment develop their own way to deal with it and excel in performance. 2. Professional work: They faced difficulties in choosing the specialization, promotion, and unfriendly attitudes of their directors and patients. 3. Between the family and career: Although having received much higher education, they still followed the old role of the women in the traditional society. They tried to do the best on both sides. They not only asked themselves to adapt but also sought helps from mother side family, mother in law or maids. 4. Individual life planning: Woman doctors treat their profession as an important part of life. Regardless of the past or the present, even in the future, they all take their interests in and continue work in their medical field. They love it deeply too.