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mmcv304's review against another edition
I found citations lacking and information oversimplified
anjalisudarsan's review against another edition
5.0
What an eye-opening book! Really takes us through an in-depth look at how the medical industry has failed women from ancient greek times to today - the mythologising of women's bodies, purity culture and social norms have led to the deaths and pain of millions of women even to this day. Unwell women is only UK and US history based, so the religion that has influenced a lot of the policing of women's bodies is Christianity, but clearly even in Ancient Greek time, pre-Christ, there has been insane policing of the female body due to the lack of rights.
Women, it seems, do not 'own' their bodies. Rather, the female body has always been considered a property of a man, and the government or their countries. For reproduction and men's pleasure has been the priority, and not female well-being, due to which there has been such lack of research into what really is behind women's illnesses. She starts from the case of the 'wandering womb', to 'hysteria', where things like post-partum depression, menstrual cramps, auto-immune diseases like lupus, were just lumped into idiotic titles like this.
We learn about how doctors back then would just prescribe marriage and child-bearing as the solution to every women's health problem. Then it turned to dangerous things like lobotomies - with the goal of doctors sort preserving the sanctity of women's roles at homes. At a time when abortion rights and birth control is so heavily restricted and we're losing control of our own bodies, has this really changed?
She also looks at the suffrage movements, to even get women into medicine as doctors. Considering how in the past men refused to even look/touch women's bodies, to lacking any sort of understanding of things like menstruation and childbirth, it is only the female doctor that can really know a woman's body. The feminists who were literally assaulted and suffered a lot in jails and under the male authorities, is the reason why today we're living in a world why we can opt to go to a female doctor. Because to this day, male doctors still show instances of minimising female pain and accusing them of being overdramatic/attention seeking, and refusing to prescribe medication that may affect 'fertility' (even for women who don't want children.)
It is kind of a depressing book because things have changed, but not so much. There are not just men but women too, who are against women gaining autonomy of their own bodies, who will fight against the feminist movements pushing for a better research into women's bodies - purity culture and social norms so deeply embedded in them. There's just a twinge of hope. This has been an excellent read
Women, it seems, do not 'own' their bodies. Rather, the female body has always been considered a property of a man, and the government or their countries. For reproduction and men's pleasure has been the priority, and not female well-being, due to which there has been such lack of research into what really is behind women's illnesses. She starts from the case of the 'wandering womb', to 'hysteria', where things like post-partum depression, menstrual cramps, auto-immune diseases like lupus, were just lumped into idiotic titles like this.
We learn about how doctors back then would just prescribe marriage and child-bearing as the solution to every women's health problem. Then it turned to dangerous things like lobotomies - with the goal of doctors sort preserving the sanctity of women's roles at homes. At a time when abortion rights and birth control is so heavily restricted and we're losing control of our own bodies, has this really changed?
She also looks at the suffrage movements, to even get women into medicine as doctors. Considering how in the past men refused to even look/touch women's bodies, to lacking any sort of understanding of things like menstruation and childbirth, it is only the female doctor that can really know a woman's body. The feminists who were literally assaulted and suffered a lot in jails and under the male authorities, is the reason why today we're living in a world why we can opt to go to a female doctor. Because to this day, male doctors still show instances of minimising female pain and accusing them of being overdramatic/attention seeking, and refusing to prescribe medication that may affect 'fertility' (even for women who don't want children.)
It is kind of a depressing book because things have changed, but not so much. There are not just men but women too, who are against women gaining autonomy of their own bodies, who will fight against the feminist movements pushing for a better research into women's bodies - purity culture and social norms so deeply embedded in them. There's just a twinge of hope. This has been an excellent read