Marie Claire | Feminist health, the new battle?

Veronica, Who was finally able to be admitted to the Italian Hospital and practice as a traumatologist without this initial “filter”. Today, with 20 years of experience, Says he has met patients who admitted that operating on men gave them more security. And it recalls cases in which the person about to be operated on asked questions “Where’s the doctor?” without even thinking that it could be a woman.

An old asymmetry

According to the publication “Gender in the health sector”, From the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Traumatology is one of the specialties with the most participation of men. Like others highly masculinized, Like urology, surgery, and orthopedics, she has higher admissions than more “feminized” specializations, such as obstetrics and dermatology.

UNDP’s publication is compelling. He points out that, in medicine, “Men hold most hierarchical positions” and that medical residences (necessary to be a specialist and ascend in the career) usually coincide with the reproductive stage of women, which produces tensions for reconciling work and home life.

The result? While currently in Medicine more women graduate that men, they are those who they specialize in a smaller proportion. But it’s not just doctors who suffer from gender-based violence; they also suffer from patients.

Gender inequalities create inequalities in health in many other ways. According to the World Health Organization, the women pay between 19 and 40 percent more for health careThey live longer, have more unmet health needs, and do more unpaid care than men (such as caring for babies, children, and older adults).

Silenced violence

In Argentina, 13% of births come from teenage mothers and it is estimated that 7 out of 10 pregnancies at this stage of life are not sought after. There is a key point there. In motherhood women we risk our lives.

Not only because of clandestine abortions, which we will finally be able to leave behind once and for all, but because when we decided to be mothers, in the delivery room we also playedn integrity and dignity. Yes, the obstetric violence it can knock out and leave psychic marks much more deep and indelible than a cesarean scar.

But this violence is a silenced aspect of medical practice. In fact, there are no official figures. According to a survey of the Observatory of Gender Violence, a 7 out of 10 women who had births between 2015 and 2018 they artificially broke their bag although this is a maneuver that has not been shown to have benefits and carries risks.

Also, one 74% of respondents report having suffered verbal abuse and / or physical part of the medical team.

“Shut up. If you don’t stop screaming, I’ll put you to sleep.” “If it hurts so much, you would have thought of it before”. “The legs go up here and leave you alone, otherwise we’ll tie your hands too” are some of the insults and denigrations that the book Feminist Health, Published in 2019 by Editorial Tinta Limón.

Juliet Saule, Author of a chapter and founder of the group the Casildas, notes that obstetric violence is much more than a matter of dramatic indices of “cuts” (large numbers of episiotomies), excessive drug use (by medicalized parties) and unwarranted interventions (such as unnecessary vaginal touches) .

“It’s not a medical or scientific problem, it’s about a cultural and political issue. What happens during the dominant obstetric care (contraception, pregnancy, abortion situations, births / cesarean and postpartum) is nothing but the reflection of a reality to which women are exposed daily“But with the volume rubbing the most,” he writes.

According to a report by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), although more women than men graduate in Medicine, they are the ones who hold the most senior positions.

According to Saule, we are not born out of context and “the violence we suffer in these processes is closely related to the rest of the history of sexist violence to which women see ourselves daily and systematically exposed. ”

Malena Correa, A doctor specializing in public health and a researcher at the Institute of Clinical and Health Effectiveness (IECS) is carrying out a study to find out the frequency of abuse during childbirth in maternity wards.

He believes that “Western medicine is patriarchal by definition“He asserts that obstetric violence is” a patriarchal practice aimed at people with the possibility of pregnancy. ” especially vulnerable populations, Such as people with disabilities, who are sometimes sterilized without the necessary consents having been met.

Morality, sex education and mental health

The patriarchy is left naked in certain “details” of the sexual health. In public hospitals, for example, male condoms are delivered free of charge, however non-female condoms, Which are there (although they are lesser known and more expensive).

The psychologist and program director of Host Foundation, Mar Lucas, consider this care in sexual intercourse (And what happens to them for women’s health) today is for women to negotiate men’s condom use. And if he decides not to put it on, the woman stays in one situation of weakness.

Sexist morality creeps into the gynecological offices.

“I think it’s much harder for a woman (than for a man) to confess to having sex outside of a stable partner. It’s harder for a woman to tell her doctor that she has anal sex or makes threesomes because moral weight, stereotypes and prejudices they are much stronger in them. Faced with these situations, women are seen as ´atorrantas´“But it is installed that men, the more sex they have, the better,” says Lucas.

While social stereotypes gag all mouths (and especially those that use rouge) in Argentina there are 5,800 new HIV cases each year, A figure that adds to the 139,000 people living with this condition, according to the latest AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Diseases Bulletin of the Secretary of Health of the Nation.

But it seems that patriarchy does not ask for a turn only in gynecology. From the perspective of the mental health, The psychiatrist Marcelo Cetkovich, director of INECO Foundation, Says: “One of the prices that patriarchal culture pays is the highest incidence of depression in women.”

The specialist confesses to perceiving that some of his colleagues they take suicide attempt more seriously of men than of women and explains that the “selective” view is not only of health professionals, but traverses society as a whole.

“In the popular imagination, women have more problems and they are weaker than men, when we all know it is not so. Women, then, find it harder to be heard and receive proper care“, He says, while pointing out that it is more complex for men to seek psychiatric help because it is difficult for them to recognize their vulnerability.

informing heart

A study conducted by the Ministry of Health of the Nation revealed that Argentine women care more for the health of his family than for his own. This means that, for example, a mother who is in charge of requesting the turn for her children to visit the pediatrician, postpones her own checkups.

One has to wonder if this concern for the family is one “Argentine evil” or cultural suffering without borders.

‘If you don’t stop screaming I’ll fall asleep completely.’ ‘If it hurts so much, you would have thought of it before.’ ‘Legs go up here and leave you alone, otherwise we’ll tie your hands too’ are some of the insults to patients in the book Feminist Health.

A video made a few years ago by the American Society of Cardiology it showed a woman who, despite feeling the first symptoms of a heart attack, was still preparing breakfast for her children.

Dra.Veronica Volberg, Head of the external cardiology office of the Hospital de Clíniques and coordinator of the Heart and Woman Group of the Argentine Society of Cardiology, Does not see in this video a link with patriarchy, but health ignorance:

“Women have incorporated what we need to do annual breast and uterine revisions“But we don’t have to study to see what happens to the heart, when the leading cause of death for women is cardiovascular disease.”

the smoking it is precisely one of the risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Marita Pizzarro, Coordinator of the Inter-American Heart Foundation (FIC) and director of the tobacco area of ​​this entity, says that worldwide cigarette consumption is growing in the women’s segment and warns that the Argentine tobacco industry is directing their marketing strategies towards the younger ones, with the damage this entails for their health.

Pizarro describes sexist and reifying strategies of some brands, such as hiring beautiful, eye-catching and sexy promoters to give away cigarettes and sips at mass music festivals.
We said the medical field can be as sexist as a football field. We could add that until patriarchy falls, hardly stop “infecting” and splashing masculinity on doctors and patients.

to Mariana Comolli