Early Medical Women of New Zealand Fund

From 1887 to 2017, almost 2000 obituaries were published in the New Zealand Medical Journal, yet only 5 per cent of these were of women doctors. Despite the Otago Medical School’s 10 percent cap on enrolment for women, there were over 400 women graduates from the time when the first woman graduated in 1896 to 1967 when the Auckland Medical School opened. The Early Medical Women Project seeks to fill this gap in New Zealand Medical History by writing and publishing biographies on these notable women doctors. We conduct oral interviews with the graduates or their families and combine this information with archival research from the Hocken, Otago Medical School, National, Alexander Turnbull, University of Auckland, and Auckland Museum Libraries.