Patriarchate kills

Millions of people could survive, if not for gender stereotypes and ignorance. How to overcome this?

Ignorance and stereotypes annually kill millions of women. The reason is androcentricity, that is, the superiority of male over female, in medicine. It manifests itself in everything: from the roll to research of the male body to the predominance of men in the governing bodies of leading medical institutions. Old -fashioned doctors often explain female problems with hormones and make pseudoscientific diagnoses that cause only harm. Scientists urge to fight such manifestations and in return offer inclusive standards that will save almost a million people annually. Feminism for salvation - in the material "Cold".

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Stereotypes and patriarchal attitudes multiplied ignorance in medicine for a long time. Since the 1990s, scientists have been noted by gaps in medical knowledge about women, criticizing the fact that it was "a white man who became the prototype of the human object of research." This is manifested even in how scientists put experiments. For example, among animals, it was the males that were more often studied - the females were ignored for a long time. For example, in neurobiology, males were studied five times more often than females. “The unpromemptiness of females in animal diseases is a common occurrence, and these shortcomings are jealous of our understanding of female biology,” notes the scientists of the University of California Annaleiz K. Biri and Irwin Tsucker.

In the study of people, the situation is similar. The longest study of human aging in the United States, which has been carried out since 1958, has not included women in principle during the first 20 years, while the authors aimed at studying “normal human aging”. Maya Dusenbury in the book of Doing Harm talks about an even more bizarre experience that was conducted by the University of Rockefeller with the support of the US National Institutes of US Health. Researchers tried to study the effect of obesity on breast cancer and uterine cancer, and not a single woman participated in the experiment itself. The result of such studies is hundreds of drugs taken directly from the market, as many of them posed a threat to the female body.

Until now, patients may encounter the incompetence of doctors and anti -scientific stereotypes. For example, some experts attribute women's diseases to the work of their hormones, and instead of a thorough analysis of the problems and complaints, patients make her pseudoscientific diagnosis - hysteria. Many ailments in a woman are inclined to write off on psychology, not physiology: such an attitude is associated with the stereotype that women are supposedly more affected by emotions than men.

However, the study of 2021 shows that there are no particular difference between affective variability in men and women. Especially often the term “hysteria” is used in the treatment of “difficult” women, writes Dr. Kate Young, a public health researcher from the University of Monash in Australia. She calls “difficult” patients those women who did not help the prescribed treatment or who were not agreed with the doctor. “Medical education should eliminate the historical androcentric bias of medical knowledge,” Yang calls .

Many stereotypes about women only reinforced ignorance in medicine. In addition to the myth of hysteria, Young tells a historical example of a stereotype, the consequences of which are still noticeable. In her work, she describes the first skeletons of skeletons that were drawn by anatomas, of course, men. Publishing a woman, they deliberately painted her hips wider, and the skull is much smaller than that of a man, thereby showing that women, as the owners of such tiny heads, are stupid, and their most important function is childbearing, and their body is ready for this by nature.

Indirectly, the fact that women in medical institutions are not represented by women: a study conducted in 2018 in Canada, shows that the females who occupy leadership positions (heads of the departments, dean of medical institutions and hospitals) are also affected by the fact that the leaders in medical institutions is also affected by less than men. There are also few women in the medical recommendations development committees. But more women work in low -paid positions. In addition, the difference in salaries between men and women who occupy the same post is preserved . This situation is relevant even in countries where it was possible to achieve significant progress in the field of gender equality, for example, in Canada.

Feminism saves

Patriarchal attitudes in medicine annually take millions of lives. According to a study by the Lancet scientific journal, about 2.3 million women prematurely die from cancer. The study shows that more than one and a half million women of them could be saved if they had access to primary prevention and early detection of the disease. Another 800 thousand could have been able to recover completely if they received an equal access to cancer with men.

According to the statistics of the European Institute of Gender Equality, cancer is included in the top 3 diseases, due to which women die prematurely. More fatal outcomes are recorded only due to stroke and coronary heart disease. Moreover, in the future, cancer will become even more dangerous: in 20 years, oncology can hit 44% more people than now, and mortality will increase by 60%. This will also affect Russia, where even now the cervical cancer has become one of the main causes of death in young women.

At the same time, as the numbers show, cancer has sexual specifics. For example, manifested mainly in women breast cancer is the third most important cause of premature death among them. For comparison: a specifically “male” prostate cancer is only the eighth in terms of mortality for men. Scientists admit that a slightly higher risk of cancer developing during life is generally observed in men than in women (23% versus 19%), but at the same time, women more often than men die from a specific cancer floor (that is, “female” breast cancer is more dangerous than “male” prostate cancer).

The Lancet Commission concluded that death forecasts among women are associated not only with the biological characteristics of the female body. A large role in this is played by the social status of a woman in a patriarchal society. Women are more susceptible to the fatal consequences of cancer, because they do not have enough opportunities to see a doctor for primary diagnosis, which is not available to everyone. In more developed countries, up to 36% of deaths from cancer among women were premature, while in less developed regions this indicator reached 72%.

For a long time, stereotypes about the purpose of a woman in life have long affected diagnostics. A woman in patriarchal societies is perceived primarily as a mother. Its reproductive function is important for society, and in many ways medicine was focused on this aspect of the woman’s health, not paying sufficient attention to other ailments that may bother her. “The historical lack of research on women's health problems has threatened the quality of medical information available to women, as well as the quality of medical care that they receive,” the US public health service reported in 1985.

Changes for the good

Researchers came to the conclusion that equality in relation to patients will save more lives. In their opinion, medicine needs to be done more inclusive, as well as be sure to eradicate stereotypes about female health. To achieve such a goal, researchers propose to use the approach of the intercetic course of feminism - that is, try to take into account not only the experience of all women, but the experience of each individual woman (for example, the experience of a woman born in Africa, varies greatly with the experience of a woman from Europe, and this should be taken into account in diagnosis and treatment).

“We urge everyone to take into account our position in the gender and social hierarchy throughout all the processes of research and recognize that scientific efforts, regardless of the most good intentions, will never be able to maintain a purely objective position,” the study says.

Scientists offer a number of measures that need to be introduced into medical practices by 2030 to improve the situation, in particular, with oncology. First of all, you should change the approach to the preparation of doctors. For example, in medical universities, the basics of gender theory should be taught. Specialists fighting cancer must fully understand female experience and know the features of the development of oncology precisely in women.

You should also change the approach to the organization of research. First you need to better study how cancer affects women, especially pay attention to the lack of primary prevention. The causes of the most common type of cancer in women in the world - breast cancer - are still studied very superficially. By 2030, all studies of cancer should be divided by sexual basis for more accurate information on the incidence among women - this knowledge will help a lot in the initial diagnosis of the disease.

The authors of the study also note the importance of the atmosphere of equality in hospitals and research centers: for this you need to solve the problem with the difference in salaries and protect employees from harassment. In addition, financial assistance should also be available for men-doctors: for example, it is worth introducing the policy of paid leave for childcare for all employees of medical institutions by 2030. The study also urge to allow more women to leading posts both in hospitals and in scientific activity. “By 2030, at least half of all senior editors and members of the editorial of cancer magazines should be women,” the Lancet magazine commission said.

The absence of gender stereotypes could save millions of lives. Medicine began to get rid of stereotypes only recently, although it is known about them for a very long time. Lancet warns that mortality indicators will not be reduced if you do not change the approach to the treatment of women. Feminism, initially a political course, makes adjustments to science - if the conclusions of the commission accept and integrate, this will help to eradicate ignorance and save more people.