Women and Obstetrics: The Loss of Childbirth to Male Physicians Essay

Wo manpower and Obstetrics The impairment of Childbirth to Male Physicians Woman is often referred to as a dis consolationd state of the young-begetting(prenominal) norm. Medical testing is done on men, with men as the norm. Womens bodies are diseased and dysfunctional. Female processes are not radiation diagram occurrences in the female body. They are deviant processes, needing male consultation and male solutions. This medical checkupization of womens bodies occurred during the eighteenth and 19th centuries as medicine became professionalized and men came to be in operate of womens bodies and their processes. During the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth and part of the eighteenth century, midwives oversaw womens medical needs. Childbirth and diseases of the productive organs were the domain of midwives. Books on midwifery taught midwives to diagnose problems, to suggest treatments, and to superintend birth. As men sought to professionalize medicine and to further their con trol they began to become involved in midwifery and developed obstetrics and gynecology. The recess from midwife to obstetrician and gynecologist occurred from the early eighteenth through the nineteenth centuries. Relinquishing control of their territory was not something midwives did voluntarily, rather it happened as a result of questions of womens place and innovations in technology. Mens access to education and to technology provided them with an advantage over female midwives. Female midwives and women in general were denied medical education. They were not exposed, nor allowed to use certain technologies. In order for midwives to keep their job, they were prohibit from practicing medicine. Using technology was practicing medicine midwives could not use technology to ease labor or to diagnose... ...d (New York, New York Oxford University Press, 1986)Leavitt, Judith Walzer, ed., Women and Health in America (Madison, Wisconsin The University of Wisconsin Press, 1984)Mitchins on, Wendy, cult and Insanity in Women A Nineteenth Century Canadian purview Journal of Canadian Studies 21 (1988) 1199-208Morantz-Sanchez, Regina Markell, Sympathy and Science Women Physicians in American Medicine (New York, New York Oxford University Press, 1985)Moscucci, Ornella, The Science of Woman Gynecology and Gender in England 1800-1929 (Cambridge, England Cambridge University Press, 1990)Tatlock, Lynne, Speculum Feminarum Gendered Perspectives on Obstetrics and Gynecology in Early Modern Germany Signs 17 (1992) 725-56Wajcman, Judy, Feminism Confronts Technology (University Park, Pennsylvania The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991)