Invisible Lady Doctors and Bald Femininity: Professional Conference in Czech Reproductive Medicine

Roč.12,č.1
Visual Studies

Abstrakt
This article analyses visual representations of femininity and women at the annual conferences of the Czech Obstetric-Gynaecological Society. The analysis reveals representations objectifying women (and their bodies) in such a professional setting, based on the event documentation (conference programs and books of abstracts between 2006 and 2014, and field notes and photo documentation made during the conferences in 2012 and 2014). While the medical specialization of gynaecology and obstetrics deals with women’s bodies as objects of expertise, nevertheless the purpose of specialised professional conferences is to cultivate and spread recent knowledge in the field among practitioners, who are (gender neutral) professional experts. Omnipresent product advertisements targeted at women as consumers, and representation of women as objects, tend to reproduce stereotypical imagery of gender “appropriate” dual spheres and complicate the professional relationship between men and women in the specialization. The visual perspective applied to an event otherwise framed as expert and professional revealed significant gender bias, which helps us understand a particular aspect of gender relations in the medical profession that contributes to the reproduction of the notion of most medical specialisations as men´s professional world. The conference renders professional women invisible and their objectified and commodified body remains the very visible aspect of a bald femininity.

Klíčová slova:
medical profession; gender; stereotypes; gender advertisements; late modern medicine
Reference

Acker, J. 1990. “Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations.” Gender & Society 4(2): 139-58. https://doi.org/10.1177/089124390004002002

Becker, Howard. 1977. Boys in White: Student Culture in Medical School. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.

Bordo, Susan. 2003. “Never Just Pictures.” Pp. 454-465 in The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader, edited by Amelia Jones . New York: Routledge..

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

———. 2001. Masculine Domination. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Cahill, Heather A. 2001. “Male Appropriation and Medicalization of Childbirth: An Historical Analysis." Journal of Advanced Nursing 33(3): 334-42. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2648.2001.01669.x

ČGPS Program 2006. Accessed November 29, 2014 (http://www.cgps.cz/akce/2006/ck/doc/Program%20Celostatni%20konference%20CGPS%20a%20SSG%202006.pdf).

ČGPS Program 2007. Accessed November 29, 2014 (http://www.cgps.cz/akce/2007/ck/doc/program_cgps_ssg_2007.pdf)

ČGPS Program 2008. Accessed November 29, 2014 (http://www.cgps.cz/akce/2008/ck/doc/Program%20komplet%20CGSP%20SSG%202008.pdf).

ČGPS Program 2009. Accessed November 29, 2014 (http://www.cgps.cz/akce/2009/ck/doc/PROGRAM%20-%20Brno%202009.pdf).

ČGPS Program 2010. Accessed November 29, 2014 (http://www.cgps.cz/akce/2010/ck/doc/PROGRAM%20nahled%2011.pdf).

ČGPS Program 2011. Accessed November 29, 2014 (http://www.cgps.cz/akce/2011/ck/doc/PROGRAM%202011%20web.pdf).

ČGPS Program 2012. Accessed November 29, 2014 (http://www.cgps.cz/akce/2012/ck/doc/PROGRAM%20Brno%202012.pdf).

ČGPS Program 2013. PDF document.

ČGPS Program 2014. Accessed November 29, 2014 (http://www.gynkonference.cz/user-files/2014%20program%20komplet.pdf).

Davis-Floyd, Robbie and Carolyn F. Sargent. 1997. Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge: Cross-cultural Perspectives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Dudova, Radka. 2012. “Regulation of Abortion as State-Socialist Governmentality: The Case of Czechoslovakia." Politics & Gender 8(1): 123-44. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1743923X12000098

Fairclough, Norman. 1995. Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. Language in Social Life Series. New York: Longman.

Foucault, Michel. 1990. The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction. New York: Random House.

———. 2009. Zrození biopolitiky : kurz na Collège de France (1978-1979). 1st ed. Brno: Centrum pro studium demokracie a kultury (CDK).

Ginsburg, Faye D. and Rayna R. Rapp, eds. 1995. Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of Reproduction. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Goffman, Erving. 1987. Gender Advertisements. New York: Harper & Row.

Hall, Stuart, ed. 1997. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. Culture, Media, and Identities. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Hrešanová, Ema and Jaroslava Marhánková. 2008. “Nové trendy v českém porodnictví a sociální nerovnosti mezi rodičkami.” Sociologický časopis/Czech Sociological Review 44(1): 83-112.

Inhorn, Marcia Claire, ed. 2007. Reproductive Disruptions: Gender, Technology, and Biopolitics in the New Millennium. Fertility, Reproduction, and Sexuality v. 11. New York: Berghahn Books.

Jones, Amelia, ed. 2003. The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader. New York: Routledge.

Jordan, Brigitte. 1997. “Authoritative Knowledge and its Construction". Pp. 55-79 in Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge: Cross-cultural Perspectives, edited by R. Davis-Floyd and C. Sargent .,. Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Jordanova, Ludmilla J. 1993. Sexual Visions: Images of Gender in Science and Medicine between the Eighteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.

Lie, M. 2014. “Reproduction Inside/Outside: Medical Imaging and the Domestication of Assisted Reproductive Technologies.” European Journal of Women’s Studies, Published online before print August 13, 2014.

Mac an Ghaill, Máirtín. 2007. Gender, Culture, and Society: Contemporary Femininities and Masculinities. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-230-21627-3

Martin, Emily. 2001. The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction. Boston: Beacon Press.

Oakley, Ann. 1993. Essays on Women, Medicine and Health. Edinburgh Education and Society. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

———. 1994. Essays on Women, Medicine and Health. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Oates-Indruchová, Libora. 1995. “Žena na ulici: (Stereo)typické reprezentace žen v současné velkoplošné reklamě v České republice. (Women on the Street: (Stereo)Typical Representations of Women in Billboard Advertising in the Czech Republic).” Sociologický časopis/Czech Sociological Review 31(1): 85-104.

Rabinow, Paul and Nikolas Rose. 2006. “Biopower Today.” BioSocieties 1(2): 195-217. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1745855206040014

Riska, Elianne. 2012. “Women in the Medical Profession: International Trends.” Pp. 423-38 in Enlarge Image: The Palgrave Handbook of Gender and Healthcare, 2nd ed.. Palgrave Macmillan.

Riska, Elianne and Aurelija Novelskaite. 2008. “Gendered Careers in Post-Soviet Society: Views on Professional Qualifications in Surgery and Pediatrics.” Gender Issues 25(4): 229-45. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12147-008-9063-7

Riska, Elianne and Katarina Wegar. 1993. Gender, Work, and Medicine. London: Sage Publications.

Rose, Gillian. 2012. Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials. London: SAGE.

Scully, D. and P. Bart. 2003. “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Orifice: Women in Gynecology Textbooks.” Feminism & Psychology 13(1): 11-16. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959353503013001002

Shildrick, Margrit. 1997. Leaky Bodies and Boundaries: Feminism, Postmodernism and (Bio)Ethics. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.315.7117.1243a

Silverman, David. 2001. Interpreting Qualitative Data: Methods for Analyzing Talk, Text, and Interaction. London: Sage Publications.

Slepičková, Lenka. 2009. “Neplodnost jeho a neplodnost její: Genderové aspekty asistované reprodukce.” Sociologický časopis/Czech Sociological Review 45(1): 177-203.

Slepičková, Lenka, Eva Šlesingerová and Iva Šmídová. 2012. “Biomoc a reprodukční biomedicína v České republice (Biopower and Reproductive Medicine in the Czech Republic).” Sociologický časopis/Czech Sociological Review 48(1): 85-106.

Stacey, Margaret. 1991. The Sociology of Health and Healing: A Textbook. New York: Routledge.

Sturken, Marita and Lisa Cartwright. 2009. Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. New York: Oxford University Press.

Šlesingerová, Eva. 2005. “Imaginace genů a hranice etnických identifikací.” Sociální studia 2005(2): 35-55.

Šmídová, Iva. 2011. “Childbirth, Authoritative Knowledge in Reproductive Medicine and Masculine Hegemony.” GEXcel Work in Progress Report Volume XV. Gendered Sexualed Transnationalisations, Deconstructing the Dominant. XV. GEXcel Work in Progress Report, pp. 167-74.

Šmídová, Iva, a Lenka Slepičková. 2013. “Lékaři a vyhoření: ožehavá každodennost medicíny pohledem sociologie.” In Burnout syndrom jako mezioborový jev, pp. 97 – 104. Prague: Grada.

Treichler, Paula A., Lisa Cartwright and Constance Penley, eds. 1998. The Visible Woman: Imaging Technologies, Gender, and Science. New York: New York University Press.

Williamson, Judith. 1978. Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising. Ideas in Progress. London: Boyars : Distributed by Calder and Boyars.

Young, Iris Marion. 1994. “Gender as Seriality: Thinking about Women as a Social Collective.” Signs 19(3): 713-38. https://doi.org/10.1086/494918

Metriky

461

Views

240

PDF (English) views

43

Mobi (English) views

39

ePub (English) views