A male nursery school teacher doesn't surprise anybody nowadays, but a lady who's asphalting the road still tangles.
Gender is the social-cultural construction of the biological notion of sex.
As long as men and women fulfill their social role within the social-cultural scope everything is fine. But if they enter each others fields this has implications for the social status of the people involved. The task of healing. The physicians made sure that the association with the feminine stayed somewhat limited. They avoided the taint of craft or manual labour and didn't touch the body.