Written by Rory Martorana
It’s no secret that medical research has historically focused on cisgender Caucasian males. What happens to everyone else when medical symptoms present differently in their gender or race? Maya Dusenbery explores this in her book, Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick. First published in 2018, the book follows several women through their struggles in determining what’s wrong with them and how to treat it. While the conditions are unique to each person, the one thing they all have in common is the gaslighting they experience at the hands of medical professionals.
Gender bias and medical gaslighting is by no means a new problem. Still, it continues to stir up controversy. The New York Times even highlighted the issue in a recent article by Christina Caron. Why does this happen? What can be done to remedy it? Maya will be joining us virtually on August 30 to discuss these questions and her book in more detail.
Interested in learning more about gender bias and medical gaslighting? Check out the following titles, available at NHFPL:
• Diagnosis Female: How Medical Bias Endangers Women’s Health / Emily Dwas
• Unwell Women: Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made World / Elinor Cleghorn
• Ask Me About My Uterus: A Quest to Make Doctors Believe in Women’s Pain / Abby Norman
• Bodies and Barriers: Queer Activists on Health / Adrian Shanker (editor)
• Everything Below the Waist: Why Health Care Needs a Feminist Revolution / Jennifer Block
• Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World that Wasn’t Designed for You / Jenara Nerenberg
• Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men / Caroline Criado Perez
• Trans Medicine: The Emergence and Practice of Treating Gender / stef m. shuster
And—of course—don’t forget to join us on Zoom as we’re joined by Maya Dusenbery to discuss this important topic!
Rory Martorana is an Adult Services Librarian at the Ives Main Library, where her area of focus is Community Health programs and Adult Literacy.
Maya Dusenbery is a journalist, editor, and author of Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick. A New York Times Editors’ Choice pick, Doing Harm was the winner of the 2019 Minnesota Book Award for general nonfiction and was named one of the best books of 2018 by NPR. Formerly the editorial director of the feminist blog Feministing.com, Maya has written for publications including the New York Times Magazine, Scientific American, Slate, Mother Jones, and Pacific Standard. She regularly speaks about gender bias in medicine to students, health care providers, patient advocates, and researchers. Learn more about the book here: https://www.mayadusenbery.com/book