Abstract
In April 1915, Ruth Rouse (1872–1956), the traveling secretary of the World Christian Student Federation (WCSF), visited Helsinki. During her visit, she gave a talk titled “Our Life Work.” The central message of the talk was that God had a plan and a calling for everyone. Finding one’s true calling was of paramount importance, something that endowed life with beauty and significance. However, one should not actively seek one’s calling but rather patiently wait for God to guide one along the right path.1 What makes these recommendations noteworthy and somewhat out of place is the fact that the women Rouse was addressing were students at the University of Helsinki—that is, women who were planning to enter the civil service and/or professions rather than traditional female vocations. This chapter considers what happened when professionalism came into contact with the prevailing Christian view on womanhood and women’s work. From the outset, there would seem to be a poor fit between professionalism and a feminine vocation. Qualities associated with a feminine calling included lifelong commitment, submissiveness, self-sacrifice, and renunciation of outward signs of wealth and status. Professions, on the contrary, were exclusive occupations that could be entered only after a long and expensive, usually academic, training and that were characterized by a strong esprit de corps (that did not exclude fierce internal competition), high social status, high income, high degree of professional autonomy, and above all a considerable stake in social and—on occasion—political power.
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Notes
Inkeri Taube, Kuku, Ambomaan parantaja: Lähe- tyslääkärin elämyksiä Afrikassa (Helsinki: WSOY, 1947); and Kirsti Kena, “Rainio, Selma (1873–1939),” Kansallisbiografia-verkkojulkaisu, uploaded October 20, 2002, http://artikkelihaku.kansallisbiografia.fi/artikkeli/4710; as well as at least two unpublished theses: Henriikka Halmetoja, “Lähetyslääkäri Selma Rainio länsimaisen kulttuurin ja lääketieteen edustajana Ambomaalla vuosina 1908–1938” (Master’s thesis, University of Joensuu, 2008); and Elina Ojala, “Selma Rainio (1873–1939) Afrikan lääkärilähetyksen perustajana ja vaikuttajana Ambomaalla” (Master’s thesis, University of Helsinki, 1990). Rainio also figures in more general Finnish mission histories: Matti Peltola, Toivo Saarilahti, and Per Wallendorf, Sata vuotta suomalaista lähetystyötä 1859–1959 II: Suomen lähetysseuran Afrikan työn historia (Helsinki: Suomen Lähetysseura, 1958); Kirsti Kena, Eevat apostolien askelissa: Naislähetit Suomen lähetysseuran työssä 1870–1945 (Helsinki: Suomen Lähetysseura, 2000); Kari Miettinen, On the Way to Whiteness: Christianization, Conflict and Change in Colonial Ovamboland, 1910–1965 (Helsinki: SKS, 2005). Exceptionally, Annakaisa Tavast, “Naislääkäreitä Duodecimin jäseninä 109 vuotta,” Duodecim 123 (2007): 1352–55, discusses Selma Rainio—albeit very briefly—as a physician rather than a missionary.
Heini Hakosalo, “Kivuton murros? Naisten oikeus aka- teemisiin opintoihin ja ammatinharjoitukseen autonomian ajan Suomessa,” Historiallinen aikakauskirja 104 (2006): 397–407; and Heini Hakosalo, “Virkaa tekemässä: Lääkärinaiset 1900-luvun alun Suomessa,” Tieteessä tapahtuu 26 (2008): 13–21. Kansallisbiografia (The National Biography of Finland, http://www.kansallisbiografia.fi/kb/haku) contains several entries on individual medical women, as does Arno Forsius’s extensive web page Ihmisiä lääketi- eteen historiassa (http://www.saunalahti.fi/arnoldus/haklaaih.html). Salme Parvio and Ruth Wegelius have edited a booklet on the history of the Society of Women Physicians: Salme Parvio and Ruth Wegelius, eds., Suomen Nais- lääkäriyhdistys r.y—Finlands kvinliga läkare r.f. 1947–1987 (Helsinki: Suomen naislääkäriyhdistys, 1987). Literature on early medical women is extensive but heavily concentrated on the leading Western European countries and the United States. On the first German female university-trained doctors, see Patricia M. Mazόn, Gender and the Modern Research University: The Admission of Women to German Higher Education, 1865–1914 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003); James C. Albisetti, “The Fight for Female Physicians in Imperial Germany,” Central European History 15 (1982): 99–123; Anja Burchardt, Blaustrumpf——Modestudentin—Anarchistin? Deutsche und russische Medizinstudentinnen in Berlin 1896–1918 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1997). For France, see Constance Joël, Les filles d’Esculape: Les femmes à la conquête du pouvoir médical (Paris: R. Laffont, 1988). On British developments, see Catri- one Blake, The Charge of the Parasols: Women’s Entry to the Medical Profession (London: Women’s Press, 1990).
Mauno Jokipii, ed., Keski-Suomen historia II: Keski-Suomi maakunta-ajatuksen synnystä itsenäisyyden aikaan (Jyväskylä: Keski-Suomen maakuntaliitto, 1988), 482, 591–92. On Lilli Lilius-Rainio, see Pirkko-Liisa Rausmaa, “Lilius, Lilli (1861–1945),” Kansallisbiografia- verkkojulkaisu, uploaded October 11, 2000, http://artikkelihaku.kansallisbiografia.fi/artikkeli/4472; and Heikki Laitinen, Matkoja musiikkiin 1800- luvun Suomessa (Tampere: Tampereen yliopisto, 2003), 90–92.
Ruth Franzén, Ruth Rouse among Students: Global, Missiological and Ecumenical Perspectives (Uppsala: Studia Missionalia Svecana, 2008), 91–101; Ruth Franzén, Studentekumenik och väckelse (Helsinki: Finska kyrkohisto- riska samfundet, 1987), 36, 42–43.
Maarit Leskelä-Kärki, “Passive to Active: The Lived Spaces of a Religious Woman,” in Time Frames: Negotiating Cultural History, ed. Anu Korhonen and Kirsi Tuohela (Turku: Department of Cultural History, 2002), 112.
Sari Aalto, “‘llman kollegiaalisuutta ei ole lääkäreitä’: Lääkäriyhteisö ja ammattikunnan kulttuuriin kasvaminen,” in Vapaus, terveys, toveruus: Lääkärit Suomessa 1910–2010, ed. Samu Nyström (Helsinki: Suomen Lääkäriliitto, 2010), 79.
Pirjo Markkola, Synti ja siveys: Naiset, uskonto ja sosiaalinen työ Suomessa 1860–1920 (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2002), 59–71.
Norman Etherington, “Education and Medicine,” in Mission and Empire, ed. Norman Etherington (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Andrew F. Walls, “The Domestic Importance of the Nineteenth Century Medical Missionary: The Heavy Artillery of the Missionary Army,” in The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith, ed. Andrew F. Walls (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2009), 211–20; Ruth Compton Brouwer, Modern Women Modernizing Men: The Changing Missions of Three Professional Women in Asia and Africa, 1902–69 (Toronto: University of British Columbia Press, 2002).
Anne Ollila, Jalo velvollisuus: Virkanaisena 1800-luvun lopun Suomessa (Helsinki: SKS, 1998).
Pirjo Markkola, ed., Gender and Vocation: Women, Religion and Social Change in the Nordic Countries, 1830- 1940 (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2000); Markkola, Synti ja siveys; and Ollila, Jalo velvollisuus.
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© 2014 Terhi Utriainen and Päivi Salmesvuori
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Hakosalo, H. (2014). “Our Life Work”. In: Utriainen, T., Salmesvuori, P. (eds) Finnish Women Making Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137383471_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137383471_5
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