This is a textual investigation of the battle between the American Medical Association and the American Medical Women's Association over the 1921 Act for the Promotion of the Welfare and Hygiene of Maternity and Infancy—popularly called the Sheppard-Towner Act. Based on the rhetorical debate between these two groups as revealed in their respective medical journals, the author outlines how the trajectory, content, and demise of Sheppard-Towner were fundamentally structured by gendered intra- and interprofessional struggles among physicians, midwives, nurses, and social workers. By analyzing Sheppard-Towner within Abbott's (1988) system of professions, the author demonstrates how gender shapes the boundaries of jurisdictional disputes. More specifically, the author demonstrates how gender alliances and gender fractures between and among professions not only account for the rise and fall of Sheppard-Towner, but are part and parcel of the histories of professionalization projects generally.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Abbott, A.
(1988). The system of professions: An essay on the division of expert labor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
2.
Anderson, O.
(1968). The uneasy equilibrium. New Haven, CT: College and University Press Services, Inc.
3.
Atkinson, P.
, & Delamont, S. (1990). Professions and powerlessness: Female marginality in the learned occupations. Sociological Review, 38.
4.
Barker, K. (1993). Birthing and bureaucratic women: Gender professionalization and the construction of medical needs, 1920-1935. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
5.
Bledstein, B. J.
(1976). The culture of professionalism: The middle class and the development of higher education in America. New York: Norton.
6.
Caplow, T.
(1954). The sociology of work. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
7.
Carr-Saunders, A. P.
, & Wilson P. A. (1933). The professions. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
8.
Chepaitis, J. B. (1968). The first federal welfare measure: The Sheppard-Towner Maternity And Infancy Act, 1928-1932. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Georgetown University.
9.
Cott, N.
(1987). The grounding of modern feminism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
10.
De Normandie, R.
(1935). Prenatal care (Bureau Publication No. 4). Washington DC: Government Printing Office.
11.
Freidson, E.
(1970). Profession of medicine. New York: Dodd, Mead.
12.
Freidson, E.
(1986). Professional powers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
13.
Haskell, T. L.
(1984). The authority of experts. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
14.
Hurd-Mead, K. C.
(1933). Medical women of America. New York: Froben Press.
15.
Klaus, A.
(1993). Every child a lion: The origins of maternal and infant health policy in the United States and France, 1890-1920. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
16.
Koven, S.
, & Michel, S. (Eds). (1993). Mothers of a new world: Maternalist politics and the origins of the welfare states. New York: Routledge.
17.
Kunzel, R.
(1993). Fallen women, problem girls: Unmarried mothers and the professionalization of social work, 1890-1945. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
18.
Ladd-Taylor, M.
(1986). Raising a baby the government way. New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press.
19.
Larson, M. S.
(1977). The rise of professionalism. Berkeley: University of California Press.
20.
Leavitt, J. W.
(1986). Brought to bed: Childbearing in America, 1750-1950. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
21.
Lemons, S. J.
(1973). The woman citizen: Social feminism in the 1920s. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
22.
Lorber, J.
(1984). Women physicians: Careers, status, power. New York and London: Tavistock.
23.
Maternity Legislation
. (1921). Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, 185(12), 360-361.
24.
Melosh, B.
(1982). “The physician's hand”: Work, culture, and conflict in American nursing. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
25.
Millerson, G.
(1964). The qualifying associations. London: Routledge.
26.
Mink, G.
(1995). The wages of motherhood: Inequality in the welfare state 1917-1942. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
27.
Moldow, G.
(1987). Women doctors in gilded-age Washington: Race, gender, and professionalization. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
28.
Morantz-Sanchez, R.
(1985). Sympathy and science: Women physicians in American medicine. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
29.
Muncy, R.
(1991). Creating a female dominion in American reform, 1890-1935. New York: Oxford University Press.
30.
Numbers, R.
(1978). Almost persuaded: American physicians and compulsory health insurance, 1912-1920. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
31.
Numbers, R.
(1982). Compulsory health insurance: The continuing American debate. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
32.
Orloff, A. S.
, & Skocpol, T. (1984). Why not equal protection? Explaining the politics of public social spending in Britain, 1900-1911, and the United States, 1880s1920. American Sociological Review, 49, 726-750).
33.
Parsons, T.
(1968). Professions. In International encyclopedia of the social sciences (Vol. 12, pp. 536-547). New York: Macmillan.
34.
Reverby, S.
(1987). Order to care: The dilemma of American nursing, 1850-1945. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
35.
Rothman, S.
(1978). Women's proper place: A history of changing ideals and practices, 1870 to present. New York: Basic Books.
36.
Saravasy, W.
(1992). Beyond the difference versus equality policy debate: Postsuffrage feminism, citizenship, and the quest for a feminist welfare state. Signs, 17(2), 329-362.
37.
Shefter, M.
(1978). Party, bureaucracy, and political change in the United States. In L. Maisel & J. Cooper (Eds.), Political parties: Development and decay. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
38.
Skocpol, T.
(1992). Protecting soldiers and mothers: The political origins of social policy in the United States. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
39.
Skowronek, S.
(1982). Building a new American state. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
40.
Starr, P.
(1982). The social transformation of American medicine. New York: Basic Books.
41.
Walsh, M. R.
(1978). “Doctors wanted: No women need apply”: Sexual barriers in the medical profession. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
42.
West, Mrs. M.
(1924). Prenatal care (Bureau Publication No. 4). Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
43.
Wiebe, R.
(1967). The search for order, 1877-1920. New York: Hill & Wang.
44.
Wilensky, H.
(1964). The professionalization of everyone?American Journal of Sociology, 70, 137-158.
45.
Witz, A.
(1990). Patriarchy and professions: The gendered politics of occupational closure. Sociology, 24(4), 675-690.
46.
Witz, A.
(1992). Patriarchy and professions. London: Routledge.
47.
Woodbury, R. M.
(1926). Maternal mortality: The risk of death in childhood and from all diseases caused by pregnancy and confinement. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
