Blue Stockings by Jessica Swale
Directed by Jamie King
Studio 58 at Langara College presentation
Performance Works, Granville Island
October 6–16, 2022
Vancouver, BC: On the day I entered medical school, one of a small group of women in our class, it never for a minute occurred to me that if we women completed the 6 year program, we would not be awarded the MBChB degree, along with our male colleagues. I took it as a given, just as I took for granted my right to vote. Girton College, the first women's College in Cambridge was established in 1869. Yet it was 80 years later, and a mere 15 years before my enrolment at med school, that Cambridge University actually awarded the first degrees to women. I soberly reflected that while my university did not discriminate against would-be women doctors, government policies prevented black students from entering the Faculty of Medicine until 1986.