Medicine, Patriarchy and the Ongoing Impact on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights

Modern medicine is considered to be scientific and evidence based. However, it was born within deeply patriarchal, col0onial and exclusionary sy6stems and founded on the violent suppression of women healers during the European witch hunts. This origin laid the groundwork for a male-dominated medical establishment that deliberately erased generations of feminine knowledge and healing traditions. Women were ousted from caregiving roles through a calculated mix of violence, professionalization, and ridicule. Instructions like Harvard medical school refused entry to women up until 1945 citing laughable reasons – from fears of distraction to the supposed drying of ovaries from too much thinking.

With colonization, these ideologies and systems were imposed on the countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, suppressing and dismissing centuries of indigenous medical knowledge and also criminalizing sexual and reproductive norms. Homosexuality, gender fluidity, sexual expressions and abortion were all systematically pathologized, policed, and punished through newly imposed medical and legal systems. The repercussions of this are still being felt today through the Penal Codes set up in the 1800s.

Women’s pain is disbelieved, their sexual health curated for ensuring male pleasure and their reproductive choices controlled. While women patients face medical gaslighting, women doctors themselves face gender bias and systemic barriers to leadership.