• Gromala T

• Bryan, William Jennings
• Chiropractic / history
• Chiropractors, Women
• Chiropractors, Women / history
• Hunt, Harriet K.
• Palmer, Mabel Heath, 1881-1949
• Paxson, Minora C
• Sigma Phi Chi
• Women's Health

How have twentieth-century women experienced the early coeducation of chiropractic schools and field practice? A random survey of two hundred members of Sigma Phi Chi, the women’s chiropractic sorority, was conducted.  The nine-item open-ended questionnaire addressed women chiropractors’ motivation, support systems, educational experiences, financial experiences, community response, use of techniques, and professional issues relevant today.  The analysis and interpretation examines how gender has affected women in chiropractic as students and field doctors. 

Both B. J. Palmer and his wife, Mabel Heath Palmer, gave prominence to the role of women in chiropractic.   Indeed, of D.D. Palmer’s first fifteen graduates, three were women.   Mabel Heath Palmer’s graduation in 1906, however, would become the watershed event of women in chiropractic, the impact of which is discussed in this paper.

Paper delivered before the third Conference on Chiropractic History, National College of Chiropractic, Lombard, Ill., June 4, 1983.

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