A Comparative Look at Research Funding Allocation

A Comparative Look at Research Funding Allocation

We’re continuing our discussion on the gender health gap but for this episode we wanted to take a look into what the allocation of research funding can tell us about it. In understanding the root of medical misdiagnosis, there’s a need for people to become more aware of the gaps in funding and investment in research towards a variety of different health issues. Gaps in knowledge arise not only from gaps in our cultural treatment of gender, but also from gaps of financial investment in the production of knowledge.

Media and Medical Gaslighting

Today, we wanted to further delve into the role media has in being the bridge between knowledge production and connecting women in a wider community over their healthcare experiences. Media created on this issue serves to both educate and connect, both of which are vital to enacting social change. Science is a practice that both uncovers reality as well as produces reality. Producers of knowledge have the power to both explain our experiences as well as engineer them. The experience of women historically being left out of producing official and so-called more “credible” knowledge, when combined with the rise of modern media technologies, has led to them re-taking the microphone of knowledge production. Women turning to and utilizing media to be their own knowledge producers is key, and a milestone in this long timeline of how we perceive women’s health.

Obstetric Violence

This podcast is centered around a 2022 article from Singh and Dmowska, on “obstetric gaslighting and denial of mothers’ realities” These researchers conducted 46 in-depth interviews with mothers who had self-described traumatic births, and found that “gaslighting can operate as a key, yet under examined, strategy of obstetric violence, or the institutional and interpersonal violation of women's’ rights during pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum” They found that the gaslighting in manifested in doctors denying–and therefore destabilizing– mothers’ realities” Singh and Dmowska worked to undercover the four different ways that these mothers were being gaslit and their realities denied: being the denial of the mother’s humanity, the denial of the mothers’ knowledge as valid, the denial of the mothers’ judgements as ration, and the mother’s feelings as legitimate

Women In Medicine and Institutional Gaslighting

This short episode will look into the history of women working and medicine, and the discrepancies there are today, and look at that in connection to medical gaslighting. By looking over multiple studies there is a general consensus that today women are still widely underrepresented in positions of leadership within the industry. Note that position of leadership is a key factor in this level of the issue because according to a study conducted only in 2021 women comprise of more than half of medical students, yet occupy only a minority of leadership roles. And this culture of work environment can inhibit a woman's career success and motivation to pursue leadership roles in the field. Factors such as wage gaps, discrepancies in professional titles and more all contribute to this issue.

Guest Interview: Morgan's Experience Receiving Diagnosis

We are joined today by Morgan, a 23 year old white woman who is graduating this spring with a bachelors from SFU. At the prime of her life, both professional and not, both entering the workforce and looking to put her talents to use, but also live life to the fullest that a woman in her twenties wants to take advantage of. And yet, just when she’s entering this next stage of life, looking to take the reins, her experiences with the medical system, and her struggle to have her health issues taken seriously, have concretely impacted that feeling of freedom that someone at her stage of life should have.