The home and the nation: an oral history of Indian women doctors, national development and domestic worlds.

Women doctors in post-colonial India were an integral part of the developmental regime envisaged by policy makers in the field of public health, especially in efforts to control overpopulation and regulate maternal and infant health in a newly independent nation embracing modernity and progress. Oral history interviews demonstrate that women doctors perceived themselves as crucial to this process of nation building, and their role in providing healthcare to Indian women placed them on an equal footing with their male colleagues. However, this narrative of equality did not often find its way into domestic spaces, and oral history interviews reveal the ways in which women doctors were forced to negotiate, modify and sometimes accommodate other narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]