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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Inspired by a report released by the Woodruff Medical Training center, which is an educational institution for medical assistants, nursing assistants, and patient care technicians we’re going to discuss four commonly underdiagnosed conditions in women. The purpose of this is to give some insight to listeners who might not be familiar with the challenges women face getting a diagnosis and also use this episode as an opportunity to educate about the reasoning behind these underdiagnosed conditions, and also how much these conditions can affect anyone's livelihood not just women.

The medical gaslighting of women is not a new occurrence. The denial and manufacturing of doubt in women’s realities is not a new product of modernization, but instead an archaic and ongoing experience that has only been heightened with the advance of medical education and medical treatment. This project of ours on medical gaslighting of women, and how we’re trying to understand contemporary experiences of it, is buttressed by the historical framing of it, the societal framing of it, and the institutional framing of it. By understanding the history of the problem, we can better recognize patterns of abuse, and if we can better identify and call those practices out, when we have named our so called “enemy”, then we can better organize to fight against it.

On this episode of MissDiagnosed, we wanted to share about a case that not only sparked our interest, but resonated with us so deeply that we were spurred to start this project. The case in question comes out of the Yale Fertility Clinic in the States in 2020, where up to 200 patients, largely women receiving invasive egg retrieval procedures, were given saline instead of fentanyl, after an opioid-addicted nurse had swapped them. The case details several facets of the issues many women face in accessing medical treatment: systematic failures not being accounted for, degrading forms of communication–or lack of communication–from doctors, and most notably, women’s pain being disregarded. We wanted to share with listeners that the pain many women experience is not in their heads.

Introductory episode that covers our topics of discussion and the objectives behind creating this podcast.