In this time of anti-vaxxers and climate change deniers, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to discuss science critically. Jacobin magazine coined the term “New Scientism” to explain this trend, described as a fundamentalist approach to scientific practice that sees it as existing above the fray of politics and ideology; above criticism. Those who argue science is subject to influence and bias; that scientists can be apologists for the status quo, or even that not all of scientific progress is progressive, are labeled anti-science. Science, it seems, is not above embracing the “with us or against us” political style popularized in the post-9/11 era.
Last year the University of Wisconsin-Madison created a post-doctoral fellowship in feminist biology. This decision was met with accusations that the school was “rejecting science for equality.” The Guardian asked, incredulously, “Is the science of biology sexist?” The assumption is that science cannot be sexist, despite being conducted within and as a part of, rather than separate to, a sexist and patriarchal society.
Dr Janet Hyde, Director of the Center for Research on Gender and Women at UW-Madison, argued for the necessity of scientific inquiry that seeks to correct androcentric gender bias, “Scientists are humans and therefore have ideas, such as gender stereotypes, that other people have. Often these stereotypes influence how research is done, from the hypotheses that are proposed to the way in which the data are collected. Results that confirm gender stereotypes seem to “make sense,” whereas results that are contrary to stereotypes don’t seem to make sense and may not be reported.”
Dr Janet Hyde, Director of the Center for Research on Gender and Women at UW-Madison, argued for the necessity of scientific inquiry that seeks to correct androcentric gender bias, “Scientists are humans and therefore have ideas, such as gender stereotypes, that other people have. Often these stereotypes influence how research is done, from the hypotheses that are proposed to the way in which the data are collected. Results that confirm gender stereotypes seem to “make sense,” whereas results that are contrary to stereotypes don’t seem to make sense and may not be reported.”
This is illustrated most clearly when we look at the research conducted on a drug that is taken only by women, oral contraceptives.
Yet women are told that the majority of scientific research disproves the reality of their lived experience.
When Dr Alice Roberts described her experience of severe mood changes on oral contraceptives in the Guardian, science writer Ben Goldacre, amongst others, challenged her on Twitter, suggesting strongly that she should not have shared her experience when the preponderance of scientific research either denied the connection or was inconclusive.
However, hundreds of women were prompted to share their own similar issues with oral contraceptives with Dr Roberts and the response was overwhelmingly one of women grateful to have their experiences validated.
Considering the number of women who use oral contraceptives and the number of years they have been on the market, the amount and scope of research available is relatively small, with far more conducted into issues like breakthrough bleeding.
PSHE advisory and science teacher Alice Hoyle wrote in response, “Female voices and experiences are continually erased throughout history and in life and this is also true in science. How dare people erase the lived experience of women like this? The sheer volume of women on Twitter talking about their mental health experiences as a result of hormonal contraception should be raising red flags. How can this be dismissed because the “evidence” (such as it is) says there is no effect? How about listening to women?”
Feminists have argued that science sees the male body as the ideal and the female as a deviation. Leader of the women’s health movement, Barbara Seaman, once remarked that it seemed as though scientists were always trying to deal with “the disease of being female.” The medical field of gynecology was developed in the late nineteenth century and was not followed by an equivalent for male reproductive science. Soon after hormones were discovered, just over 100 years ago, it was decided that men’s hormones were stable and women’s hormones were unstable. As such scientific enquiry presumes women’s hormones require stabilization to meet the male ideal.
Just two decades later synthetic hormones were created and oral contraceptives, by replacing changeable natural hormone levels with one static synthetic hormone level, achieves this goal. Gender stereotyping assures the belief that, in regards to the impact on mood, taking oral contraceptives should bring about an improvement. Even if for some women this stabilization will be experienced as anhedonia or depression, suppressing the function of the female reproductive system until it is required for childbearing remains recommended medical practice. This is what is seen to “make sense.”
The most common reasons cited for the stalling of the development of a similar male hormone-based contraceptive pill are the negative impacts on mood and libido.
Across the board women’s health concerns are more likely to be labeled as psychosomatic and they are less likely to receive rapid treatment even when reporting chronic pain. This distrust of women’s own accounts of their experiences is not limited to the medical field and is currently debated more widely in discussion of cases of rape, for example.
Those that are seeking to develop more research into women’s health issues find it difficult to both source funding and to get their findings published.
Dr Jerilynn Prior, endocrinologist and director of the Center for Menstrual Cycle and Ovulation Research in British Columbia, recently conducted a study into infertility in young women in Norway with significant results – 37% of the women were not ovulating.
The paper was rejected by five major medical journals, with only one reviewing the results. “I attribute this to the devaluation of women’s reproductive physiology by the dominant culture. Medicine, granting bodies and journal editors are all vested in that dominant culture. I even went so far as to appeal the decision at the British Medical Journal. Just imagine, instead, that this were a study in young men and the results showed that 37% were infertile at the time of the sample. Would you consider that relevant to patient care or practice? We think so. Is BMJ a general men’s medical journal?”
Dr Jayashri Kulkarni at Australia’s Monash University is currently undertaking a large national and international survey of women’s subjective experiences on third generation, newer hormonal contraceptives. She has discovered a link between these drugs and devices and subclinical depression with a variety of symptoms from lowered self-esteem to brain fog to obsessive-compulsive anxiety disorders.
Dr Kulkarni felt compelled to undertake this research for the benefit of women, “I built what I was hearing from women into a research project because I have a passionate belief that women have the answers. Yet they tell their doctors what they know is going on and they don’t feel heard.
I want their experiences to be validated by providing evidence that this is indeed happening.”
Telling a woman who has made the connection that the research does not support her lived experience is unlikely to stop her coming off the Pill. But for the many who have not made the link, silencing women prolongs their suffering.
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