ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the various axes around which medical education and practice of midwifery were instituted. It focuses on the realignment of professional relationships between the female and male medical practitioners of midwifery, with the former dominating the realm of actual practice and the latter contributing to the more theoretical domain of midwifery education and research on obstetrics. The chapter argues that in the case of Bengal medical intervention in childbirth did not reflect a clear-cut ascendancy of male medical professionals by marginalising/uprooting the dhais, as it was claimed to have happened in the West. It analyses the role of both female and male practitioners in marking their own spheres of dominance in the domain of midwifery. The chapter discusses the sociocultural stereotypes that influenced the reconceptualisation of midwifery as a scientific-medical discipline and significantly affected its institutionalisation in colonial Bengal.
