Answer
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
In this fatwa:
It is allowed for women to work as nurses and to treat people of the opposite sex in case of necessity.
As for your question, Sheikh Atiyyah Saqr, the late head of Al-Azhar Fatwa Committee, states:
Any work that amounts to seeing people’s private parts is strictly haram (prohibited), and it cannot be deemed permissible except in case of necessity when it is hard to find a doctor from the same gender.
It is known that necessity is governed by the circumstances that surround it. Thus, it is not allowed to misuse the dispensation granted by the Shariah.
It is allowed for women to work as nurses and to treat people of the opposite sex in case of necessity. The proof for the permissibility may be derived from the Hadith which indicates that the Prophet (peace be upon him) gave permission to a man to do cupping for a woman.
In Fath Al-Qadeer it is reported that Abdullah Ibn Az-Zubayr hired a woman to be a nurse for him, and she put stitches in his leg and dressed his head.
In his book Al-Adab Ash-Sharyyah, Ibn Muflih states that if a woman gets sick and she does not find someone to treat her except a man, then according to the law of necessity, it would be allowed for him to look at her body even the private parts (for medical reason).
The same applies to a woman treating a man. Ibn Himdan and others are reported to have held the same view, based on the hadith that mentions that the Prophet gave permission to a man called Abu Tayba to do cupping for a woman.”
Almighty Allah knows best.
Editor’s note: This fatwa is from Ask the Scholar’s archive and was originally published at an earlier date.