Within our Women and Gender Studies Class we have seen many examples of how the portrayal of gender can affect how individuals perceive their own gender as well as others’. On television, men outnumber women in almost all aspects of television appearances. We have seen firsthand how far too often, men are portrayed as protagonists while women are reduced to mere sidekicks within the film media.
A new study investigating medical textbooks reveals the gender and ethnic imbalances that exist within medical texts. The study focuses on the portrayal of the human anatomy, and the strong trend of white males being used (nearly exclusively) to exhibit anatomical features. Under such instances when a neutral body part was displayed, most often, a male figure was used to show it: “The six North American manuals studied used male bodies in 17% of cases and female ones in 5% to illustrate “neutral body parts”, while the six European ones used male images 12% of the time and female ones only 2%.”
The same inequalities can be seen in the representation of race within these textbooks. 75% of the manuals that were investigated exclusively included only Caucasians to model various body parts. For the other 25%, Caucasians were used predominantly as illustration.
The author of the study argues that not only is unequal representation evident, but that racist and sexist connotations exist. The researcher argued that because only men are used to depict the nervous system, traits such as intelligence and thought are attributed to men. Despite evidence to the contrary, many people in the medical world still believe that white-male heterosexuals are the pinnacle of human evolution. Within these texts, white-male heterosexuals are arguably portrayed as such.
Not only is this trend offensive to some, it is possibly dangerous, as explained by the researcher, “Using only one body type as a model and treating the rest as variations is dangerous for health.” Many of the texts offer treatments designed solely for white males. This would undoubtedly increase the risk of medical mistreatment for individuals who are not male and/or not Caucasian.
As we have learned this year, the portrayal of race and gender in society is very important and should not be taken lightly. In this case, an inequality in how often certain genders/ethnicities are portrayed in medical textbooks may very well lead to dangerous health effects to certain individuals who are discriminated against.
The article referenced within this post can be found here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081015132108.htm
- Jason Heckler
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3 comments:
This brought to my attention something that was completely invisible throughout my educational career. I've taken many science classes and observed many of these anatomical diagrams, but have never noticed or acknowledged these trends before. While the unbalanced representation is undeniable, I find some of the parallels hard to believe. To advocate that using male versions of the brain and nervous systems will make people subconsciously convince people that men are smarter is outrageous to me. While some facets of this gender construction seem debatable, the inequality definitely exist.
I would never have guessed that gender issues were so pervasive that even medical texts were affected. However, now that I think about it, it doesn't seem that unbelievable. As such things are brought to the surface it really highlights a foggy inequality. Bringing attention to the issue is the first step to making a change.
I really like this post since I have never really thought about this issue in the past. I am a biology major and have had to read many textbooks on anatomy, but I never noticed that most anatomic diagrams are of caucasian men. This shows that inequality still exists, if only in uncommon forms. I agree with The Reinman that it is bizarre to think that showing a male brain will somehow show that men are smarter.
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