From India to Japan to Syria: Three Young Women and a Forbidden Dream in the 19th Century, Becoming Doctors

c. 1885. (Left to Right) Anandibai Joshee of India, Kei Okami of Japan, and Sabat Islambooly of Syria. Credits: emergingink.com

Let’s go back with a new not well known story of women from the past. This time, we go back almost 150 years, to the years between 1880 and 1890: studying medicine as a woman was practically impossible in most parts of the world. Universities and hospitals rejected women; in many countries, even access to higher education was considered a risk to their “natural” mission as mothers. Yet, three young women from very distant corners of the planet broke all these barriers to follow their dream.

Their common journey has the destination: the United States, to the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, founded by the Quakers. A necessary clarification: we must give credit to the Quakers, a religious community that believed in the equality between men and women as we understand it today... A principle very advanced for the time, and according to this spirit of equality, this college was founded where a woman could truly become a doctor.

Let’s get to know our three protagonists.

Anandibai Gopal Joshi, born in 1865 in India, arrives in the United States when very young. Imagine being born in a society like colonial India, where from birth, you are destined for the traditional roles of mother and housewife. She decides to fight against all the obstacles, including the strong resistance of her family, which condemns her dream, and of society, to study Western medicine, graduating before the age of 21. Graduated, she returns to India as a living symbol that a different destiny was possible, but tuberculosis takes her life in 1887, too soon to truly practice.

Kei Okami was born in 1859 in Japan. She is the first female doctor from her country to obtain a medical degree from a Western university. Returning to Japan, she faces discrimination from institutions and hostile social norms, but despite everything, she does not give up and opens a gynecological clinic, teaches, and spreads health education among women. She dies in 1941, after a life dedicated to creating opportunities for other women.

Sabat Islambouli, born in 1867 in the Ottoman Empire, now Syria, also earned her degree and returned to her country. Information about her career is fragmented; she practiced throughout the Middle East, fighting against religious opposition. She died in 1941.

This is not a story like many others. It is extraordinary because these three young women come from radically different cultural, religious, and geographical contexts, and all three had one thing in common at about the same historical period: the courage to pursue the same vision, to be pioneers and become doctors despite obstruction and opposition of everyone around them. They had no support from anyone; they only had their determination, sacrifice, and the will not to accept the "you can’t" dogmas of the society.

All three, after graduation, returned to their countries to prove that a different fate was possible, that it was not necessary to submit to unjust rules and impositions... They returned and set an example that many other women would later follow, so much so that the university where they graduated would later welcome many other women from fragile and diverse backgrounds.

Today, it seems obvious to us to see women doctors in our daily lives, but thanks to women like Anandibai, Kei, and Sabat, millions of women around the world can dream of a career in medicine without having to worry about being judged for their gender.

References:

• https://ignite.globalfundforwomen.org/be-the-spark/anandi-gopal-joshi-kei-okami-sabat-islambooly
• Rao, Mallika (8 April 2014). "Meet the Three Female Medical Students Who Destroyed Gender Norms a Century Ago.” Huffpost. Retrieved July 18, 2019. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/19th-century-women-medical-school_n_5093603