Feminism and Medicine

[macaroonmunch]

Hi

I'm a frequent lurker on these pages and have learnt a lot from what I've read so I thought this would be a good place to ask what people's thoughts were on how women and women's health issues are seen in medicine. Apologies if I seem poorly informed, I've only recently begun really thinking about feminist issues.

I'm a current medical student and a lot of things in my education so far have just really annoyed me and don't seem right. The norm for all medical examples and anatomy is almost always male and the whole characterisation of some problems as 'women only' just seems odd to me when there is comparatively so little emphasis on 'men's health', as though men's health is the default and women's health problems are a whole other category. Even diagrams and models of the female reproductive system seem odd compared to the male versions- why is the vagina always depicted as gaping open whereas diagrams of penesis are always flaccid?

I don't know if I'm being over-sensitive but I know that the medical profession has not always been known as a bastion of feminism so I just wanted to gauge other people's opinions. What are the main ways in which medicine/medical education are sexist? And why? Sorry for the length of the post, I hope it's not too rambly.

You're not being oversensitive. Medicine is very patriarchal.

They didn't even manage to work out the anatomy of the clitoris until about ten years ago, and you're right the vagina being portrayed as a hole is extremely offensive.

There is a whole area of medicine devoted to women, gynaecology/obstetrics but then there is a whole area of medicine devoted to childhood disease and treating children. I would think if you specialised in urology you would find a very high percentage of patients would be male.

I would think that most of the top consultant posts are held by men.

I would say it's because when the move away from traditional herbal medicine towards the new scholastic science based medicine came about, physicians needed a degree to be able to practice. Universities were closed to women and this effectively shut them out.

All the anatomical models were developed by men, eg. Vesalius, who all concentrated on the male body, considered the default. You are right to be annoyed because such neglect can have pretty serious consequences. We are after all very different.

sorry i meant to say before Vesalius - as in he was the first man to focus in detail on the female organs. Sorry Ves! Don't turn in your grave! As I understand it though he got a few things wrong, but at least he tried..

Medicine IS deeply mysogynistic.

Women are butchered, prodded and poked for the benefit of the male doctors not the female patients.

Smear testing
Mammograms
Pregnancy
Childbirth
Menopause
Contraception
Cosmetic surgery
Mental health
Pcos
Endometriosis
Breastfeeding

There are so many parts of medical practice where women are abused to some extent.

Nods along to Margery's post

Not to mention the harms wreaked on women by psychiatry

Hang on - what do you mean about the vagina being "gaping open" and Nyac saying it's portrayed as a hole? Sorry I'll probably sound really ignorant now but I thought it was to some extent a kind of "tube" shape? Is that wrong?

On the subject of sexism in medicine, I read something recently (which I now can't find) on the differences between male and female heart attack symptoms and how the women's symptoms are never shown on TV or even in awareness campaigns, and was pretty shocked - I had never know this and always associated arm pain with heart attacks - shooting pains in the arm are more common to men and women very very rarely have them accompanying a heart attack. For women jaw pain/ache is more common and should always be taken seriously. Women are less likely to have chest pain, too.

AHA - found it. distractedbyshinyobjects.tumblr.com/post/18135702490/for-women-heart-attacks-look-different

The vagina is closed in on itself. It's not a hole. There's no permanent space there.

Agree about psychiatry Prolesworth - lobotomies, electric shock treatment etc. And every generation of women since the mid twentieth century has been showered with happy drugs, most with horrible side effects, the latest being SSRIs.

I read a couple of years ago about how they were beginning to test pain medication on women - reported as if this was ground breaking. The article said that pain medication had always been tested on men as their were concerns that women's hormonal cycles might have an impact on the results! Because of course women never take painkillers do they?

I don't know if this applies to other medicine trials on healthy people? But I do know they test medicines on volunteers at the university near us for pharmaaceuticals and the adverts always seem to be for healthy young male volunteers.

Just want to wave a little flag here for all the doctors that care for both their female and male patients, and their children too!

I did find some patriarchal old codgers of consultants on my journey through med school, but also some inspirational female doctors and role models too.

OP, the paucity of focus on 'men's health' is actually regrettable, and is the reason why things such as prostatic cancer aften present late, and why suicide is such a common cause of death in otherwise 'fit and well' young men.

And Margery, to my knowledge I have never butchered, prodded or poked one of my patients for my benefit or is that just what male doctors do?

Bertie you are right about women's heart attack symptoms and the media, and it makes me as angry as you, but the 'big blokes don't cry' culture is also hugely detrimental to men's mental health.

I think medicine has been as misogynistic as the culture it inhabits historically, but 20 years ago, I can't remember any particular 'institutional' bias against women in my training.

OP, you are in training for a fantastic job where you can make the most extraordinary differences to the lives of your patients and their families..keep at it!

Yes, drug trials are usually healthy young males.

No menstrual cycles or possibility of them being PG.

Lab rats are generally male too. Females not needed for breeding are killed.

But the problem with that is women with periods take these drugs, so surely they need to know the affect they have?

I think putting contraceptive implants into the arms of very young teenage girls is an example of a new form of abuse, and one which is becoming increasingly commonplace and unquestioned.

Margery I'm sorry but I don't entirely understand your post (I am sleep deprived so it is entirely possible it's me being thick) but you say
"Women are butchered, prodded and poked for the benefit of the male doctors not the female patients."

Then list things like pregnancy, menopause, PCOS, and endometriosis, which are medical conditions rather than things done to women by doctors.

It just confused me a little.

OP, I hope you have either gone to bed, demonstrating a commitment to a healthy lifestyle, or are revising too hard to checkup on mumsnet

agree generally with timetosmile. Especially male patients presenting late, in denial etc.
Enjoy medicine, op.
Margery why is smear testing "for the benefit of male doctors"? actually tbh I think I largely don't understand your post but would be grateful if you could elaborate. Especially given all the female doctors around.
Trials definitely need to include women. And children. And people with renal/liver disease. And old people. There are lots of under-represented groups, not all defined by sex. The main issue is money and the lack of it to extend the size of trials enough to draw valid conclusions about sub-groups.

Except women at just over 50% of the population really are not a sub group

Except women at just over 50% of the population really are not a sub group

Except women at just over 50% of the population really are not a sub group

Sorry don't know how that happened

I am another that somehow cannot see how there is any benefort to male doctors by doing smears, mammograms etc.. the beneficiaries are the women in whom cancer is detected earlier ?? If its the act of doing it then for goodness sake its female nurses that do them most of the time.

how the heck is breastfeeding for the benefit of male doctors ?

I just do not understand at all..... maybe its the hour and lack of sleep . I too would be interested to hear the logic in those statements.

How is it abuse to put contraceptive implants in young women ???? Women request it, they are not held down and administered it by force ! I thought that this type of contraception gave women more control of their bodies not less.

as for the depiction of female genitals as open ......there are many variations of the diagrams models and depending on the particular angle / view its so the structure of the labia, clitoris and urethra can be seen so the medical students / nurses can, for example, put a catheter in the right place ..... to make it easier to understand how the cervix hangs down into the vagina and there are folds in it etc. Reading subliminal messages into medical diagrams seems a bit of an assumption.

Why the comment on a flaccid penis used in diagrams ..... that is the way it is most of the time and there is usually no learning requirment for it to be seen as erect .... though sometimes it is.

Healthy males were almost always used for trials as using women seen as too risky in case of early pregnancy ..... of course now women can have tests for pregnancy much earlier, even before missing a period, it may be much more acceptable a risk to have women involved in clinical drug trials.

medicine was certainly dominated by men for centuries..... but we cannot say that as much now. Its not perfect but its certainly not masogynist imo

I'm not sure about some of this...

Isn't the characterisation of some problems as 'women only' because some problems ARE women only? Like some are men only and some only affect children? We are physically very different. If very little emphasis is given to men's health then that's a concern, especially as so many GPs are women.

Didn't get Margery's post at all, what am I missing?

I think psychiatry is an interesting area, where the thinking of (loons) like Freud have proposed all sorts of nonsense about women. writing women's emotions off as hysterical.

Freud wasn't a loon. He is fantastically outdated now, but he gave a huge boost to medicine of the mind.

To say that women are abused for benefits of male doctors is completely nutso. I mean really.

Although, I was told by a male doctor that surgery was the only option. He was very dismissive of the other more "holistic" options which actually seem to be working, but I wouldn't want to extrapolate from that that there is tendency for male doctors to be like that - that would be completely cuckoooo