How does gender shape clinical practice?
An emerging body of research points to gender bias in medical practice. This project examines how gender is addressed in medical practice, exploring historical and present-day documentation to inform medical education and improve patient care.
Project description
Medical studies have shown differences in treatment of men and women that are not medically justified. Recent research has revealed unequal treatment based not just on gender but also on race, age, class and sexual orientation. In fact, while people’s lives and health are influenced by their gender and other intersectional dimensions, it is unclear if and how all these dimensions are translated and used in clinical reasoning and management.
Research aim
The goal of this project is to explore how gender and intersectional dimensions are addressed in clinical practice. First, we aim to characterise how the translation of gender dimensions has evolved in clinical practice since the 1950s through a historical study. Next, we analyse how gender is used in clinical practice today, by observing clinical case presentations. Finally, we examine how the use of gender dimensions is taught and transferred in medical education.
Purpose
This project will further inform medical practice and education by producing context-specific insight into how implicit gender bias occurs in consultations. Our aim is to demonstrate possible interdisciplinary approaches in gender medicine. Our research is conducted within the framework of feminist epistemology rather than the dualist approach, which, in gender medicine, translates into an opposition between sex and gender, between the biological and the social.
Original title
Gender and Clinical Practice: an Interdisciplinary Exploration of Clinical Cases