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woman as patient by
Laura Green excerpted from Health Rights News September
1971 -- final paragraph by Womankind.
(Editors Note: Prejudice against women both as patients and has healthcare
providers was very strong in 1971.)
What really
happens when we menstruate? Can't anything be done to end menstrual
cramps? Why isn't there a safe and effective means of birth control?
Most of
us don't know the answers to these questions, or to many other questions
concerning our bodies and how they work. When we are ill, get pregnant,
or want birth control, we have to rely on the doctor's advice without
really knowing what it is that is happening to our bodies, why the
doctor is saying what he (generally) is saying, or, in fact, whether
what the doctor is saying is safe or effective. And this is true for
virtually all women, even the rich. The American medical profession
is based on keeping the patient ignorant -ignorant of her own body,
ignorant of how normal, healthy bodies work, or what happens when we
are sick, or of ways to know when an illness is serious or minor.
This built-in
ignorance starts when doctors fail to explain how our bodies work when
we are kids. It continues as our breasts develop and we begin to menstruate
without ever having any sympathetic, clear explanation of what is going
on, either from our mothers (who probably don't know themselves), our
doctors (if we are rich enough to have a regular family doctor), or
our schools (which don't begin to know how to deal with the subject
of sex). It is reinforced if, as young women, we become pregnant, and
deal (if we are lucky) with an obstretician who, though competent,
plays the "father role" to us. He will try to "reassure"
us about the fears which it is assumed that we have without ever giving
us enough real knowledge about the exciting process of growth and birth
to give us a clear understanding of what is going on.
This built-in
ignorance results in two things. One is money for doctors whom we are
forced to turn to and whose judgments we are forced to accept unquestioningly
because we don't know enough to be able to challenge them. The second
is our own sense of helplessness about our own bodies, which we ought,
ideally, to know and understand very well. These two things work to
reinforce each other; the more helpless we feel, the more we rely on
doctors to tell us exactly what to do.
Good health
care would be different. It would start with teaching us all, from
infancy, what our bodies are like and how they work. We would each
know enough to be able to care for our bodies wisely, and can care
for ourselves, rather than making us into helpless, ignorant-feeling
to be able to work with persons trained in medicine in finding out
if our bodies are working as they ought to, and in deciding what to
do if they are not. It would work to make each of us feel that we understand
women, who must look to the doctor to make basic decisions affecting
our lives.
woman as doctor
When Elizabeth
Blackwell tried to become this country's first woman doctor over a
century ago, children mocked her in the streets, landladies refused
to rent her a room, and her teachers tried to prevent her from watching
surgery. Woman doctors have come a long way since then, but the fight
for equal admission and treatment in medical schools in hardly over.
Although
the percentage of women in medical schools has risen from 9 to 11
percent in the last year, it hasn't changed significantly from the beginning
of this century when four per cent of all medical students were women.
The U.S. compares poorly with the rest of the world -three out of
every four Russian doctors are women, and nearly one in three English
doctors and one-quarter of the doctors in France are women. Only Spain,
Madagascar and South Vietnam have a smaller proportion of woman physicians
than the United States.
American
medical schools don't seem troubled by this state of affairs. A seven-year
study by Dr. Harold I. Kaplan, a psychiatrist at New York Medical
College, revealed the deep-seated prejudices of medical school administrators
toward female medical students. Dr. Kaplan's questionnaire provoked
some responses he calls "too outrageous to publish." The answers
he did print, in an article in The Woman Physician,
dismally confirm the conservatism, indifference and callousness that
American medical schools show women applicants and students - particularly
those who try to complete their medical training while raising children.
One dean
wrote: "I just don't like women -as people or doctors - they belong
at home cooking and cleaning. Certainly not as medical colleagues who
are at best dilettantes in our field." Another said: "We have
not been overly impressed with the women that have been admitted to
medicine even though academically they are entirely satisfactory. I
think they ordinarily have so many emotional problems that we have not
been particularly happy with their performance." A third dean complained:
"I have enough trouble understanding my wife and daughters without
attempting to explain the questions in this paragraph."
The study
indicates that women who do get into medical schools are at least
as well qualified, if not better, than their male counterparts. Marquette
University wrote: "Those we admit must present excellent college
records and Medical College Admission Tests scores, and must furnish
evidence of emotional stability and of sincere motivation for medicine
as a career."
Dr. Marvin
Dunn, assistant dean at the Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1969,
who interviewed admissions officers at 25 Northwestern medical schools,
discovered that 19 schools admitted men in preference to women unless
the women were demonstrably superior. He found women were not judged
on an equal basis but required special justification for acceptance.
Most medical
schools allow pregnant students to continue their studies so
long as they do not miss too much time. However, most students resume
their full school schedules within three days to two weeks
after giving birth, hardly an adequate recovery period. Students return
to class because they fear they will lose the year's credit
if they stay out longer. In contrast, several schools in the Kaplan
study said a student with hepatitis or mononucleosis might be given
up to two months leave with full academic credit.
Most other
countries provide a longer post-partum recovery period for both students
and working women. Russian women are given 56 days paid leave before
delivery and 56 days after. A woman is exempted from night duty until
her child is one year old. In Sweden, a pregnant woman physician
may take as much as six months leave around the time of her delivery.
Polish women students are granted three months leave and lose no
academic credit.
All of
this is doubly interesting in view of the fact that the United
States needs about 50,000 more doctors. All those who control admissions
to medical schools - the American Medical Association, medical
school administrators - are guilty both of blatant discrimination against
women and of carrying out policies detrimental to the health
of all Americans.
original editor's note: the Liberation School offers courses in natural
childbirth nutrition, women and their bodies, and high school women
and their bodies to help combat the type of ignorance discussed in this
article. Call the Liberation School in care of the Chicago Women's Liberation
Union, for information about these courses.
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