ABSTRACT
The sexual divisions in society must be treated as a structural factor which is of equal importance with social class. The ideological perspectives articulate the sexual divisions in society at the structural level. They are the product of social forces operating historically over a long period. In the sphere of the medical occupations the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed an increasing division of labour and a concomitant exclusion of women from the higher and more lucrative branches of practice which were gradually emerging. The case of midwifery is uniquely important to the changing structure of sexual divisions within the medical occupations. As the modern medical profession became established hostility to the training of midwives declined, and its utility from the point of view of the medical practitioner was more clearly discerned. If other women were to follow suit and qualify as doctors it would be necessary for them to obtain access to medical schools.
