Dr. Anandibai Joshee- India’s First Lady Doctor

Born in 1865 in an extremely orthodox Brahmin family in Maharashtra, a 9 year old girl got married to a widower who was almost thrice her age. Sounds like a normal “old Indian saga”? Not really! The girl later on became the first Indian woman to qualify as a doctor. Even though she died at a very young age of 21, she opened the gates for many young women in India who wanted to do much more than devoting their entire life to household chores. Yes, we are talking about Anandi Gopal Joshi, India’s first lady to qualify as a doctor from the USA in 1886.

You go to a hospital and a lady doctor is there to attend to you. Doesn’t look like an unusual scenario, right? But back then in the nineteenth century, it was nothing less than a miracle. Even today, India is struggling with a major dearth of doctors, especially female doctors. At present, nearly 66 percent of the health workers are men. Only 17% of all allopathic doctors and 6% of allopathic doctors in rural areas are women. According to the paper “Human resources for health in India”, published in the British Medical Journal ‘Lancet’, 1 in 5 dentists are women while the number stands at 1 in 10 pharmacists.