A deep dive into the influence of patriarchy in scientific and medical research.
Is there a limit to intellect? Does human thirst for knowledge create biases that muddle the paramount of discovery to sync with the ideals of patriarchy?
A wandering womb floating throughout the body naturally causes women to be hysterical?
Hippocrates—traditionally revered as the “Father of Medicine”— revolutionised medical research altogether. Imagine the individual who introduced surgery, neurology, and orthopaedics could not understand female biology.
Or did he not deem it a worthy pursuit?
A crestfallen woman with her deteriorating mental health was reduced to the thing which made her a woman— her uterus. Yes, the very same Hippocrates who coined ethics in research thought that women were way too melodramatic because of “hysteria” that occurred due to the presence of their “wandering womb”. This “hopeless” malady found its genesis within women being women.
How blatantly reductionist, but critically viewed, we understand the limitations because Hippocrates existed almost 2500 years ago. The detriment of such philosophies introduced millennia ago echoes down the passage of time. Today, we experience a nuanced injustice. So finely enmeshed within the tapestry of society and modernisation that it becomes overlooked by the cunning of its subtlety. Inventions all around us: ranging from those for security, leisure, health, domesticity and even nourishment, were tailored by the male physique. Studies done to refine, shape and ensure the efficacy of these innovations were solely carried out on male subjects. The 1977 FDA (the Food and Drug Administration) guidelines flagrantly prohibited the inclusion of women in clinical studies due to their being “too complex”. Researchers—predominantly male— considered themselves to be the “default”.
Piano keys with a standard width of 6.5 inches fit the average male hand. It isn’t just an artistic exclusion but a safety hazard for female pianists who suffer injuries, especially when playing octaves. The make-up of the instrument itself inhibits the possibility of thorough self-expression for literally half the world’s population! If you’ve ever felt eerily cold in an office environment as your male counterparts go about their work unbothered, know that early research on thermostats used male metabolic rates as their blueprint. If your phone feels annoyingly heavy or makes it impossible to use one-handed, know that you are not being melodramatic. An Ergonomics study carried out in 2021 showed that smartphones are designed for male hands, resulting in increased wrist pain in women.
There might be some readers who have their eyebrows raised in disdain at the “frivolous” nature of the examples mentioned. Although that degree of subjectivity is intellectually constraining, I would like to point out the disparity in the health sector, which is a threat to lives. Symptoms of lethal diseases like cancer and cardiovascular disease are different in both men and women. For example, men experience chest pain, while women experience nausea and jaw pain. These distinctions are often overlooked, causing more than 50 per cent of women to get misdiagnosed after a heart attack. Psychological disorders (besides depression) like ADHD are uniquely occurring in both genders, but are often exploited to distort statistics to present a certain narrative. Doctor David Wong, in an interview, pointed out, “At first, I saw more boys than girls. Studies showed the ratio can be as high as ten to one.” He goes on to elaborate on the fact that boys with ADHD were loud and disruptive to the classroom environment, whereas the girls would quietly daydream next to a window. Both had ADHD, but rapid speech and being too energetic became symptomatic.
“The yellow wallpaper”, written in 1892 by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, gave us a glimpse into the obliviousness of Victorian society to postpartum depression and postpartum mania. It is heartbreaking how, in the twenty-first century, we still have a dearth of research done on the psychological well-being of mothers. Conditions that occur solely in women, like endometriosis, continue to go on undiagnosed. These women often go through the entirety of their lives believing “they just experience painful menstruation”. The abnormal growth of endometrial tissue outside the uterus can be life-threatening, but it’s ignorantly treated with painkillers.
We believe ourselves to have reached the pinnacle of advancement. To be the paragon of all creation. Yet, here we are not far enough away from Hippocrates and his comically bizarre theory of a “wandering womb”.
