health
If we are to counter medical misogyny, women can no longer be treated as unreliable witnesses of their own experience
The history of gynaecology fuses innovation, authority and violation – and radical surgery is not the unavoidable answer to suffering
TL;DR
- Women's experiences of medical conditions like polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome and endometriosis are often dismissed, leading to inadequate patient-centered care.
- A historical pattern exists in medicine of treating women's testimony as unreliable, their pain as less urgent, and their reproductive bodies as subject to unwarranted intervention.
- This problem stems from western biomedicine's historical view of women's bodies as volatile and governed by reproductive organs, nerves, or emotions.
- Medical knowledge creation has often used men's bodies as the norm, leading to under-research of conditions affecting women and application of treatments tested only on men.
- The history of gynaecology exemplifies a fusion of innovation, authority, and violation, with radical surgeries like hysterectomy often performed without full patient understanding or consent.
- Contemporary issues such as gaslighting in medicine, obstetric violence, and the growth of femtech industries are continuations of historical patterns, not radical breaks.
- Progress in surgical techniques does not automatically equate to justice in care; confronting medical misogyny requires addressing the histories that have made women unreliable witnesses of their own experiences.