Bilquisu Abdullah (C’25)
Women and Gender Studies major and Medical Humanities minor
Understanding the Medicalization of Gender Through A Socio-Cultural Lens
Artistic representation of medicalization in North America has had direct correlations to socio-cultural understandings of gender specifically when it comes to reproductive justice for women, as well as trans and gender non-binary individuals. An infamous example of this is Judy Chicago’s exhibition of 1982-1983 entitled “Childbirth in America” that features textile work informed by the paradigmatic shift of birth to a medical model. In my project I explored the ways in which specifically women artists have articulated impacts of the medicalization of gender. I curated a digital collection of art, literature, and historical accounts that looms together an understanding of the power cultural production has on implementing justice in structures of gendered oppression. Three aspects of gendered medicalization I hone in on are hysteria, menstruation, and pregnancy.