Marie Claire | Feminist health, the new battle?

Veronica, who was finally able to enter the Italian hospital and practice as a traumatologist without that first “filter”. Today with 20 years of experience, claims to have encountered patients who admitted it operating with men gave them more security. And it recalls instances when the person who needed surgery asked “where is the doctor?” without even thinking it could be a woman.

An old asymmetry

According to publication “Gender in the health sector”, of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Traumatology It is one of the specialties with the highest participation of men. Just like others very masculine, such as urology, surgery and orthopedics, have higher revenues than more “feminized” specializations, such as obstetrics and dermatology.

The UNDP publication is powerful. He points out that in medicine “Men occupy the most hierarchical positions” and that medical residencies (necessary to become a specialist and advance in career) usually coincide with the reproductive stage of women, causing stress for combine work and private life.

The result? While I am currently in medicine more women graduate what men, they are who they specialize to a lesser extent. But not only doctors suffer from sexist violence; also suffer from patients.

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

Violence silenced

In Argentina, 13% of births are from teenage mothers and it is estimated that 7 out of 10 pregnancies at this stage of life are not desired. There is an important point. In maternity women we risk our lives.

Not only because of clandestine abortions, which we can now finally leave behind us once and for all, but because if we decide to become a mother, we also play in the delivery roomn integrity and dignity. Yes the obstetric violence can knock out and leave much more psychological traces deep and indelible Then a caesarean section.

But that violence is a muted aspect of medical practice. In fact, there are no official figures. According to a study by the Gender Violence Observatory, a 7 in 10 women that had deliveries between 2015 and 2018 they artificially broke their bag despite the fact that this is a maneuver that has not been shown to have benefits and risks.

In addition, one 74% of the respondents reported to have suffered scolded 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 about it before”. “The legs go up here and leave them still, otherwise we’ll tie your hands too” are some of the insults and denigrations the feminist health book, published in 2019 by Editorial Tinta Limón.

Juliet Saul, author of a chapter and founder of the group The Casildas, points out that obstetric violence is much more than a matter of dramatic “cutbacks” (large numbers of episiotomies), overuse of drugs (for medicated deliveries), and unjustified interventions (such as unnecessary vaginal exams).

“It is not a medical or scientific problem, it will pass a cultural and political issue. What happens during regular obstetric care (contraception, pregnancy, abortion situations, delivery / caesarean section and postpartum) is nothing more than the reflection of a reality to which women are exposed daily, but with the volume adjacent to the maximum, ”he writes.

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

According to Saulo, we are not born out of context and “the violence we experience in these processes is closely related to the rest of the acts of sexist violence to which women are exposed daily and systematically ”.

Malena Correa, a physician specializing in public health and researcher at the Institute for Clinical and Health Effectiveness (IECS) conducts a study to assess the frequency of abuse during delivery in maternity wards.

He thinks Western medicine is patriarchal by definition”. He assures that obstetric violence is “a patriarchal practice directed at those with the possibility of pregnancy” and stresses that there is particularly vulnerable population groups, such as people with disabilities, who are sometimes sterilized without obtaining the necessary consent.

Morality, Sex Education and Mental Health

The patriarchy emerges in certain “details” of the sexual health. For example, in public hospitals, male prophylactics are provided for free, but no female condoms, which exist (although they are less known and more expensive).

The psychologist and program director Guest Foundation, Mar Lucas, thinks so concern in sexual relations (and what becomes of them for women’s health) is happening today as the woman is negotiating the use of a male condom. And if he decides not to wear it, the woman is left in one situation of weakness.

Sexist morality is creeping in gynecological offices.

“I think it is much more difficult for a woman (than for a man) to practice sexual practices outside of a stable partner. It’s harder for a woman to tell her doctor she’s done that anal sex or do 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 clear that men, the more sex they have, the better, ”says Lucas.

While social stereotypes blow all mouths (and especially those who wear rouge) in Argentina, there are 5,800 new HIV cases every year, a figure that adds up to the 139,000 people living with this condition, according to the latest AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Diseases Bulletin from the Department of Health.

But it seems that patriarchy isn’t just calling for a turnaround in gynecology. From the perspective of mental health, the psychiatrist Marcelo Cetkovich, director of INECO Foundation, says, “One of the prices that patriarchal culture pays is the higher incidence of depression in women.”

The specialist admits to notice that some of his colleagues take the suicide attempt more seriously of men than of women, explaining that the ‘selective’ view does not only belong to health workers, but also cuts across society as a whole.

‘In the popular imagination, women do more problems and they are weaker than men, when we all know that it isn’t. So women have a harder time being heard and receive proper careHe assures, pointing out that it is more complicated for men to seek psychiatric help because it is difficult for them to recognize their vulnerability.

Counting heart

A study conducted by the Ministry of Health of the Nation revealed that Argentinian women care more for the health of his family than for his own. This means that, for example, a mother in charge of making an appointment for her children at the pediatrician will postpone her own checkups.

You may wonder if this concern for the family is a “Bad argentinian” or cultural suffering without boundaries.

“If you don’t stop screaming, I’ll put you to sleep.” “If it hurts so much, you would have thought about it before.” “The legs go up here and leave them still, otherwise we’ll tie your hands too,” are some of the expletives for patients that the book Feminist Health collects.

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, continued to prepare breakfast for her children.

Dra.Veronica Volberg, head of the cardiology outpatient clinic at the Hospital de Clínicas and coordinator of the Heart and Woman Group of the Argentine Cardiology AssociationIn that video he sees no link with patriarchy, but ignorance about health:

“Women have processed what we need to do annual breast and uterine checkups, but not that we should do studies to see what happens to the heart when the first cause of death in women is cardiovascular.

The smoking it is one of the risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Marita Pizzarro, coordinator of the InterAmerican Heart Foundation (FIC) and director of that entity’s tobacco field, assures that cigarette consumption is on the rise worldwide in the segment of women and warns that Argentina’s tobacco industry directing your marketing strategies towards the youngest, with the damage it causes to their health.

Pizarro describes macho and objectifying strategies from some brands, such as hiring beautiful, flashy and sexy promoters to give away cigarettes and drinks at major music festivals.
We said it could be medical field as macho as a football field. We could add that until the patriarchy doesn’t fall, barely stop “spreading” and smashing machismo on doctors and patients.

at Mariana Comolli