The science that discriminates against women

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A woman in a straitjacket, diagnosed with hysteria, in a photo published in 1889. WELLCOME TRUST

Science has mistreated women. Jocelyn Bell discovered the pulsars, but the Nobel of Physics was taken away by his thesis director. The current president of the Astronomical Union was sent to work at her husband's office . For decades, those who got out of the lane of the socially accepted were tortured by inventing diseases such as hysteria and remedies that went through mutilating them, tearing organs from their gut. More (more masculine) minds developed theories to explain the inferiority of women and, thus, justify their subjection. Examples of the past are innumerable.

"In women are more strongly marked some faculties that are characteristic of the lower races and a past and lower state of civilization," wrote Darwin

But it is not just a thing of the past. Today, March 8 , there is only one woman for every nine men in the elite of European science. Only 25% of the highest paid researchers in the largest Spanish scientific institution are women . No woman heads a public research body in Spain . Stereotypes continue to point out that science is a men's thing . We continue to discriminate and humiliate athletes because of their physique . We inculcate girls who are not as bright as children. The laboratory environment is still sexist. And John keeps getting better than Jennifer even though his resume is the same .

"In short, the question that remains after this trip is if we are faced with examples of bad science or science to use. If improving science will be to eliminate gender bias, if that is possible, or we will have to rethink other ways of doing science. " With this forceful conclusion, a fundamental book to understand the problem of inequality in this field, written by Eulalia Pérez Sedeño and S. García Dauder, The scientific 'lies' about women , recently published by Catarata . A forceless exaggeration after the detailed review that this work gives the machismo that discriminates in science, science and science.

The medicine applies to women research in men, even though the results for them in diagnosis, prevention and treatment have not been adequately studied

To begin with, Perez and Garcia show in their book that scientists have always been there to give arguments to those who wanted women to be second-rate humans. "It is generally admitted that in women are more strongly marked than in men the powers of intuition, quick perception and perhaps imitation; but at least some of these faculties are characteristic of the lower races and hence of a past and inferior state of civilization, "Charles Darwin wrote in 1871, whose theories served to cement the idea that women were a less evolved version of man, as evidenced by the fact that his skull was smaller, for example. This ideological corpus came from afar: "Aristotle was the first to give an explanationbiological and systematic nature of women, in which it appears as an imperfect man, thus justifying the subordinate role socially and morally women should play in the polis, "the authors write. An army of prestigious primatologists and anthropologists had to arrive, defend the book, to overthrow the evolutionary myth of the evolved male hunters who fed the passive females.

The women put a step underneath the men and that also applied to medical science. The health of women, the knowledge of their bodies and their diseases, was relegated to the background and circumscribed to a single specific theme: "For a long time women's health was supposed to refer to reproductive health, including care for childbirth, contraception, abortion, uterine cancer, premenstrual syndrome and other specifically female diseases. "

"During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries," social and psychological diseases "such as feminism and lesbianism were also associated with clitoral sexuality", denounces the book

Women's bodies have been considered a deviation from the male norm, Perez and Garcia explain, and the results of medical research carried out among men are later applied to women, "even though the results for women in diagnosis, prevention and treatment have not been adequately studied. " For years, women were systematically excluded from clinical trials for new drugs: until 1988, US state agency trials only included men, so it was not known if they would have unknown adverse effects on them (or whether remedies would be discovered which were more favorable to them). Nowadays,

Perhaps the paradigm of ignorance over the body of women is the historical ignorance of the anatomy of the clitoris, an organ forgotten by medicine, by the biased insistence on the reproductive aspect of research. This led to activists in the 1970s who began to explore their bodies to learn more, in workshops that were both political acts, research and dissemination. "During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries," social and psychological illnesses "such as feminism and lesbianism were also associated with clitoral sexuality," explains the book, going into another of the most important chapters of the story: how science converts the nature of women in pathologies to cure, in problems to be extirpated, in disorders that must be treated.

"The manufacture of mental illness has been a very effective device for controlling and regulating both femininity and women's sexuality", abstract in the text

"The manufacture of mental illness has been a very effective device for controlling and regulating both femininity and women's sexuality," he said in the text. For example, in the 19th century there was an epidemic of hysteria, that supposed mental disorder of women that was treated with psychological tortures or extirpating their ovaries or their uterus. Several scary cases are reported in the book, such as when a well-known doctor explained: "I decided to deprive him of the ovaries, hoping to extirpate his perverted instincts", because his patient suffered attacks after an abortion and the doctor discovered that as a young man he masturbated. "She has not returned to her degrading habits, eager and eager to tend her home," he later congratulated. Oscar Wilde's wife, Constance Lloyd, was recently discovered to have died of an operation to remove her ovaries from a specialist in "pelvic craziness" when she actually had sclerosis.

Science still allows natural situations in the life of women to become ailments that need medicines: the social construction of the disease has become a commercial artifact that serves the interests of industry. Only this way explains that the viagra rose pharmacies ."To medicalize the problems of the daily life of women or their natural or physiological processes (as has happened with menopause or menstruation); to convert malaise due to gender inequalities in individual pathologies (as happened with hysteria or depression); or medicalize a facet of women's lives (their sexuality, for example), "Perez and Garcia write, before stopping in these presumptive current problems such as premenstrual syndrome, menopause or the rule (" research priorities have been centered more on finding contraceptive medication than in helping to regulate the cycle and its pains ").

In the nineteenth century there was an epidemic of hysteria, that supposed mental disorder of women that was treated with psychological tortures or extirpating their ovaries

Faced with all these serious cases of discrimination, in which "far from the neutrality and asepsis claimed by the scientific canon, values ​​are irremediable", Pérez Sedeño and García Dauder propose a very simple solution: to improve the access of women to the different fields of research. "When science is done from the point of view of groups traditionally excluded from the scientific community, many fields of ignorance are identified, secrets are unveiled, other priorities are made visible, new questions are raised and hegemonic values ​​are criticized (sometimes, even, true changes of paradigm are provoked). "