: Why is abuse and violence more common in gynaecology than in other branches of medicine?
In: 0
Is it?
Is there a source for this or is it just an assumption?
Maternal coercion in pregnancy and birth is especially common. Some of it comes from the “only a healthy baby matters” line by discounts mum entirely. a lot of it stems from over mediclisation of birth.
In the UK there are 4 levels of evidence type a is double or triple blind randomised Cobrrolled trials and is the gold standard. Almost none of the maternity guidelines use this evidence most of it is “cause we’ve always done this” many of them over the years have been written by men too.
Let’s look at induction for example, induction places extra stress on mum and baby and can take days. If baby or mum was really at “risk” then a c section to immediately fix the risk is a more valid option. If your are told your baby is at risk, come into the ward, oh there’s no space on delivery so we need to wait, 3 days later let’s start a process that may take over a day. You start to wonder about how high the risk was.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1595289/
Yet despite all this so many women are induced because it’s now 40 weeks or because baby is big or because its nearly Christmas and the doctors don’t want to work over Christmas. (seriously look up birth numbers for major holidays they drop conveniently)
Pregnant women aren’t seen as individual any more even strangers will ask personal details, try to touch her, reprimand her for perceived faults. Society seems pregnant women as having reduced competence “doctor /grandma/the cat knows best” “baby brain” , Medically this can be damaging if she isn’t an individual or isn’t deemed competent cough then coercion to vaginal exams (not really necessary) or to birth on your back or not in water etc etc can be ‘justified’ because she doesn’t know better
If I need open heart surgery I am told the benefit AND risk, I am told what happens if I do nothing and allows to make an informed choice, and no is allowed. If I ‘need’ intervention in pregnancy I’m only told of the risk, usually starting with still birth risk but very rarely with percentage risk given. No what happens if I do nothing, no risks of the procedure, no thought to the escalation process following the procedure. And then incredulity if you go against the medical opinion.
The book how to give birth like a feminist civers c section, birth, induction and had since great evidence based research in for further reading
It’s easier to sexualize than other branches of medicine, there’s a long history of misogyny in the medical field (don’t have a decent explanation for that), and trans people get taken even less seriously, so along with making gross advances on patients and doing things that are uncomfortable because a gyno finds it attractive, and the male-doctor phenomenon of ‘it’s probably just cramps” or “we didn’t find anything wrong so you’re fine” are likely much much more common
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