Outsiders in the Village

Abstract

A shortage of women doctors in Rajasthan’s rural government sector has left sizeable gaps in the provision of women’s healthcare. This chapter explores how, in their narratives, women doctors position themselves as outsiders in the village, unable to create successful careers and lives in rural spaces. Medical graduates considering a rural career must contend with the hierarchy of medical prestige that places cities above villages and the timescale that frames villages as ‘backwards’ spaces. In doctors’ narratives of the village, doctors used the village as code for low educational and class status—and by separating themselves from the geographical space of the village, they also put metaphorical distance between themselves and their subaltern Other. Women doctors’ reluctance to occupy rural space illuminates the ways that class, space, and gender overlap to shape the practice of healthcare, with impacts felt far beyond the careers of doctors.