Women, medicine, and sociology: thoughts on the need for a critical feminist perspective

Abstract

The relationships between women, health, and medicine are complex and contradictory. During the second-wave of the women's movement, feminists struggled to bring women's health issues to the fore. Today, their success is documented by the growing numbers of women practicing medicine, and by the increasing attention and resources devoted to women's health issues. Yet feminists remain critical of the highly gendered nature of medicine and its contribution to social inequalities. Feminists working both from within and outside the growing subfield of medical sociology have used one of its key concepts — medicalization — to explicate the negative consequences of institutional medicine for women.The continuing medicalization of women's lives is related to key ideas about the body and important trends in the structure of medicine, particularly the growing importance and sophistication of technology. The argument is made that some instances of medicalization, including women's legal punishment for fetal abuse and coerced sterilization, herald a new medico-legal alliance that impacts the poorest of women most severely. Feminists relate the growth of the public health paradigm of medicine to the emergence of the medico-legal alliance in that both rely on the power of the state and represent the continuing medicalization of women's lives. Based on these insights, the need for a continuing critical and feminist sociological understanding of medicine is stressed and possible lines of inquiry are set forth.

Citation

Plechner, D. (2000), "Women, medicine, and sociology: thoughts on the need for a critical feminist perspective", Jacobs Kronenfeld, J. (Ed.) Health, Illness, and use of Care: The Impact of Social Factors (Research in the Sociology of Health Care, Vol. 18), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 69-94. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0275-4959(00)80023-X