I’ve always thought that the existence of male gynecologists was strange. Why would men want to be gynecologists, anyways (I mean, apart from the typical lewd assumptions). When asking this question, I’ve looked to a period that is perhaps most vexing for answers: the highly masculine gynecological field of the 1960s and 70s, right on the cusp of the Women’s Movement.
There is evidence to suggest that male gynecologists of the mid-20th century (along with much of society) valued women primarily for their reproductive ability. According to one woman cited in a 1974 New York Times article, “With the declining birth rate, some gynecologists are pushing to take over as the primary physician,” despite the fact that they “just do not have the training for this, and I urge you to ask them why they think they’re qualified to be your main doctor.” That some gynecologists (gender unspecified, but keep in mind that during this period men represented 97% of gynecologists) desired to serve as women’s primary care doctors, especially during periods of declining birth rates, may indicate two things: (1) that gynecologists perceived women’s primary purpose to be reproduction and (2) that gynecologists perceived the profits associated with becoming women’s primary care doctors as being worth the health risks that such an elevation in status would impose on patients.
The first of these conjectures is unsurprising; women have long been associated with their ability reproduce, and some early feminists worked to strengthen this connection between womanhood and motherhood in their efforts to advocate for expanded women’s rights. However, these were early feminists, women of the 18th and 19th centuries who sought some way of making society understand their value during a period that looks drastically different from that which we are examining. Women of the 1960s and 70s Women’s Movement, on the other hand, already knew their value and asked that society did too, be they mothers or not. Thus, in this example we see an attempt by mid-20th century medical masculinity to remain in control of gynecology and, as a result, women in general during a period in which the basis of this control was falling apart. And one way to do this is by relegating them to the sphere of reproduction and, therefore, domesticity.
The second of these conclusions is admittedly more pessimistic. It derives from the understanding that women’s reproductive systems are not their entire bodies, and therefore that when treating only the reproductive system, much of women’s physical health is neglected. I associated the tendency to risk women’s health and wellbeing in this way to a desire for profit, but upon further reflection it could also, again, be attributed to a desire for control. It is obvious that by being a women’s primary physician, (presumably male) gynecologists would capitalize on the treatment of women’s “entire” bodies. In other words, not matter the problem, women would call (and pay) men for help, despite the fact that pre-professionalization, it was the female midwife/nurse that women would call. In this situation, they are the sole caretakers of women’s anatomy.
This kind of control is reminiscent of that which husbands had over their wives during this period; in fact, one piece of authorship describes gynecologists as necessarily male for the fact that they must occupy a similar role as women’s husbands (never mind the existence of women without husbands, I suppose). This is dangerous because, as we now know, control often leads to violence. In one 1980s New York Times article, a male gynecologist is “accused by one patient, Kathi Baker, of violating the doctor-patient relationship by having sex with her while she was recovering from a hysterectomy.” here, the person meant to care for female bodies is actually inflicting violence upon them, thereby delegitimizing themselves as doctors. This is interesting because, regardless of whether it is for profit or for control that male gynecologists sought primacy over women’s bodies, both have the potential to result in net harm – the opposite of doctors’ role in society. Here, the masculine medical hegemon undermines itself.
Now more than ever, female and woman-identifying people are seeking greater control over their bodies. We are coming to understand the importance of informed consent in medicine as well as in sex, and now it’s common medical practice for gynecologists to ask their patients if they’d like to perform some aspects of their procedures (for example, inserting their own vaginal ultrasound). This may be a result of the now-leveled gender balance in gynecology, with women now representing 59% (and soon to be more) of gynecologists. As always, we should be wary of the sort of identity politics which equate more women with better gynecological practices (to be certain, not all of these women will know how to treat women of color, or trans women), but, in the words of Dr. George M. Ryan Jr., President of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in 1982, ”I do believe that the addition of more women is healthy for the specialty… It reduces male chauvinism and makes male residents more careful and thoughtful about the things they say and do. It may even change the macho type of camaraderie that has always been part of the profession. And when one-third [or more] of the medical societies are women, it might even change them, too.” We can extrapolate upon this statement, and posit that the addition of more women of color, more trans women, more disabled women, more low-income women (in short, a greater diversity of women) to the field of gynecology will be healthy for the specialty too.
Sources:
Ehrenreich, Barbara and Deirdre English. Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers. Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press, 1973.
Rosemary Pringle. Sex and Medicine: Gender, Power and Authority in the Medical Profession. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/03/09/female-gynecologists_a_23381583/
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/women-redesigning-speculum/555167/
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