Michaela MalmbergPhD Student

About me

In my dissertation project I am studying female physiotherapists in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the struggles they faced and how their femininity and identity were shaped in relation to the profession. This was one of the first higher education programmes opened to women in Sweden (1864), and from 1887 it offered a degree as a gymnastics director, which included the right to work both as a physiotherapist, gymnastics teacher, instructor of future gymnastics teachers, and to found and run their own gymnastics institute. In this project, however, it is mainly their role in medicine and as physiotherapists that will be analysed.

 At a time when it was difficult for women to combine a professional life with a traditional female role and family formation, the profession also affected women's entire life situation, identity and private relationships. The profession could offer a relatively high degree of autonomy and independence, and also made it possible to travel abroad and look for work or set up their own institute, which many did - alone or with a friend. Women physiotherapists also founded several women's separatist organisations and were active networkers, not least by writing collective diaries over several decades, which were sent between the countries in which they worked. Some were also involved in the women's rights movement.   

In both their professional and personal lives, therefore, these women challenged many of the gender norms of their time. At the same time, there were conservative elements in Swedish gymnastics culture that these women had to contend with, as well as the biologistic arguments about the distinctiveness of the sexes that were prevalent in medicine at the time. Most of the early gymnastics directors also came from more affluent backgrounds, and some were politically conservative in addition to their commitment to women's rights. In their professional lives, they often met women from other countries and social groups. But they also experienced prejudice, devaluation and scandalisation of their profession and professional skills when they travelled abroad.

In order to analyse the lives and struggles of these women, an intersectional perspective and new biography methods are used, in which identity, expressions of femininity and gender views are understood as a process and a continuous negotiation between the individual, the group and society. The source material consists mainly of the collective diaries and articles written by the women in various gymnastics journals, women's magazines and the magazines of their own organisations. This is supplemented by a small amount of material from other writers and sources in order to better understand the images and understandings of the profession to which they had to relate.