Public Virtue, Private Ambition—Women Owners of Private Hospitals in Early Twentieth-Century New Zealand
Date
Authors
Quinn, Ann-Marie
Supervisor
Item type
Journal Article
Degree name
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Wiley
Abstract
New Zealand's early-twentieth-century health service was a two-tier system of state hospitals supported by an expanding network of over 300 private hospitals, almost exclusively owned by nurses and midwives. This article will show that this environment was created by a legislative framework introduced between 1901 and 1906, requiring nurses, midwives, and their private hospitals to be registered, licensed, and monitored. Stringent regulation could have stifled the industry. Instead, it provided fertile ground on which many women flourished as enterprising businesswomen who made significant contributions to their communities, breaking with traditional notions of nurses solely as carers and handmaidens to doctors.Description
Keywords
4205 Nursing, 42 Health Sciences, midwives, New Zealand, nurses, private hospitals, history
Source
Asia Pacific Economic History Review, ISSN: 2832-157X (Print); 2832-157X (Online), Wiley. doi: 10.1111/aehr.70032
Publisher's version
Rights statement
© 2026 The Author(s). Asia-Pacific Economic History Review published by Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.