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Discrimination Against Women Seeking Medical Care
One of the oldest and most insidious kinds of discrimination against women is the treatment of women by the medical profession. As Elinor Cleghorn documents in her outstanding work on the subject, UNWELL WOMEN: MISDIAGNOSIS AND MYTH IN A MAN-MADE WORLD, misogyny in the medical profession goes back as far as the ancient Greeks. We need to have a group to address the myriad of ways that women suffer from the systemic misogyny of the medical profession, doctors, hospitals and other healthcare institutions.
Women are discriminated at all levels of medical care, from research that ignores women's special needs and alternate biology, to treatment by misogynistic doctors and other medical professionals.
I think a group that was devoted to this will be very active, with many members contributing their experiences and their thoughts on this issue.
P.S. This would not be a circle about Women's Health, which is already the topic of another circle. This would be a circle about the SYSTEMIC MISOGYNY of the MEDICAL PROFESSION and MEDICAL INSTITUTIONS.
WHL isn't terribly active and it's appropriate for that subject matter already. I think these topics would do well there.
It's a different issue from women's health: it's about DISCRIMINATION against women. The issue has not been addressed, as far as I have been able to tell, in that group.
Good idea. We should document all cases of medical misogyny including deaths.
I think this would be a very beneficial circle. My mother died two weeks after her initial heart attack was dismissed as anxiety. Discrimination against women who seek health care is often a death sentence.
My condolences on the death of your mother. Losing your mother is a terrible, painful loss. Mine died on the operating table, and I still wonder how hard they tried to save her.