“Pretty Pioneering-Spirited People”: Genetic Counsellors, Gender Culture, and the Professional Evolution of a Feminised Health Field, 1947--1980 (2015)
Between the late 1940s and the 1980s, the field of genetic counselling transformed from a peripheral interest of physician-geneticists, to a profession dominated by women with Masters degrees. Drawing on oral histories with genetic counsellors, this article explains how the professional evolution of genetic counselling was shaped by a changing gender culture that could be simultaneously advantageous and challenging for counsellors. Within this culture, the evolution of genetic counselling was shaped by counsellors' interactions with physicians-geneticists within a `system of professions', and their position between `sympathy and science'. The field's early days were also moulded by socio-political, legal and technological factors related to genetic science and prenatal diagnosis. The history of genetic counselling illustrates the impact of gender, feminism and reproductive technologies on a relatively new health profession, and how the field became a unique site in genetic medicine where Americans have encountered the new genetics in personal, transformative ways.
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