Gender equity: Other resources

Abstract
On 8 March 2018, the Geoffrey Kaye Museum of Anaesthetic History launched its latest exhibition in an online format, The Rare Privilege of Medicine: Women Anaesthetists in Australia and New Zealand. The launch was deliberately timed to coincide with International Women's Day which carried the theme of "Press for Progress." These women's stories reveal them to have been champions for progress, as well as having the potential to be inspirational beacons of progress for the future, thereby fitting easily into the theme. This article highlights the stories of Dr. Janet Greig and Dr. Lily Jörgensen, two women featured within the exhibition. Other women are also represented, as their stories provide some degree of context to the two featured women, even though there is no evidence to suggest that they did significant work in anesthesia practice. However, this article should not be considered biographical in nature. Instead, it operates within a distinct theoretical perspective, examining the way in which historians research and interpret the past. It also considers the exhibition research, and the exhibition itself, to be a launch point for more nuanced work in this area.

Abstract
In April 2018, a statue commemorating J Marion Sims was removed from Central Park, New York, and relocated to Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, where he is buried. In 1849, Sims developed a repeatable surgical solution for obstetric fistula, a debilitating condition caused by prolonged, obstructed labour, which damages the vaginal wall, resulting in permanent leakage via the vagina from either the bowel or bladder and sometimes both. Initially, Sims appears worthy of widespread adulation. There are several commemorative statues of him, he has been afforded the title of the 'father of modern gynaecology', and for 37 years, the American Urogynecological Society held an annual eponymous lecture, among other honours. Obstetric fistula rendered women social pariahs, unable to engage fully in either domestic or public life. Sims was able to create a reliably repeatable surgical solution but did so through ongoing experimentation on enslaved women. One of these women, Anarcha, was operated on at least 30 times without the use of anaesthesia over a four-year period, despite the availability of anaesthesia for the majority of the experimentation period. Over 170 years later, Sims' story retains its relevance because it represents a clear point at which race, gender and class intersect with medicine. This paper will use Sims' own account to drive the narrative, then examine matters of agency, ethics and consent that come from it, to show that his work, and subsequent renown, were only possible because of the inherent violence of chattel slavery and other systemic forms of oppression.