"Women get this": Gendered Meanings of Chronic Pelvic Pain

Grace, Victoria M. and MacBride-Stewart, Sara J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1562-9536 2007. "Women get this": Gendered Meanings of Chronic Pelvic Pain. Health 11 (1) , pp. 47-67. 10.1177/1363459307070803

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Abstract

Chronic pelvic pain in women is a key site through which explorations of the meanings of female gender and pain might further insights into the broader question of the embodied experience of women in relation to pain. A biocultural approach is used to present an analysis of interviews with 40 New Zealand women in which they reflect on ‘how come’ they have chronic pelvic pain. Women consistently employ a mechanistic rendition of medical discourse and understandings in their constructions of ‘how come’ they have pain, accompanied by a reiteration of ‘not knowing’ and a normalizing of their pelvic pain. We explore how this normalizing works within the narratives to establish women's pelvic pain as intrinsically gendered. Etiological meanings that are constructed in medical terms and yet are unable to be interpreted within a dualist frame of normality and pathology, we argue, permeate and shape gendered experience of chronic pain conditions.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman
Uncontrolled Keywords:	chronic pelvic pain, meanings of pain, medicalization, normalization, women
Publisher:	Sage
ISSN:	1363-4593
Last Modified:	17 Oct 2022 09:25
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/3141

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