Michaela MalmbergDoktorand

Om mig

In my current research project, the aim is to study the lives and struggles of women in the profession of physiotherapy, during a period stretching from the mid-19th century and into the early 20th. This was a very early opportunity for women in Sweden and beyond, to get a higher education, leading to a relatively independent and high-status profession as a gymnastikdirektör (director of gymnastics). This included a capacity to work as both gymnastic teachers and physiotherapists and the right to run one own’s gymnastic institute, in Sweden and abroad. Both in their profession and in their private lives, these women challenged many of the gender norms of their time. They also started their own (separatist) unions, and were very active in creating a strong collective identity, not at least by writing collective diaries, spanning over several decades.

 The female physiotherapists were active in a time were both the role of women in society and the supposed “nature” of woman (i.e. women’s biology), were intensely debated, with tendencies to want to explain gender through biology. At the same time the structural fabric around women’s roles in society, and the work market were undergoing considerable changes. The aim with this research is to, through the method of new biography, combined with theories of gender, look at how the female physiotherapists negotiated and recreated their place and identity as women and professionals in such a context. I am interested in the processes of identity making and it's relationship to (different forms of) femininity and work; the tension between expectations and practice; the collective and the individual. I am also interested in biographical writing. I explore these topics by analysing the collective diaries, articles they wrote, and different kinds of material from their organisations. I argue that they created a very strong collective, and a work-influenced sense of self, which also influenced how they created their femininity.

This research also hopes to contribute to our knowledge about how different strategies have been used (by a group of female practitioners), to counter the effects of being (threatened with) marginalization and depreciation, and the renegotiation of their role and identity, in a changing medical hierarchy and society.