social writing: Instagram — “Career Woman’s Disease”
Objective: Value-add to women’s health conversations with (pop) cultural context and a storytelling caption.
art and assets by me.
Caption:
Did y’all know endometriosis used to be called the “career woman’s disease”? Doctors were legit convinced endo was an infertility side effect of white ladies prioritizing work over marriage and childrearing in their 20s.
“It’s more in women of the high socioeconomic bracket trying to attain a good socioeconomic status in life,” Dr. Veasy Butrum told The Orlando Sentinel newspaper in 1988.
Dr. B wasn’t just any doctor. He was a who’s who in reproductive medicine back then and helped seed the career woman myth in medical literature. In a 1979 study, for instance, Dr. B described endo patients as “tense perfectionists with demanding and specific goals. They are usually well-dressed and have trim figures.”
The stereotype also made it even harder for folks who didn’t fit that profile to get taken seriously and properly cared for. “African American women in particular may be at risk of being misdiagnosed because of a long-standing misconception that only white middle-class women get the disease,” Ziba Kashef wrote about endometriosis in a 1996 Essence magazine article.
Of course, the “career woman’s disease” was all bullshit. Research has since debunked that medically made-up relationship between chasing paychecks and developing one of THE most common gynecological disorders. In fact, endometriosis affects an estimated 1 in 10 uteruses from all backgrounds and fashion choices.
But medical research has yet to crack exactly who has it (see: Black women's absence in clinical studies), why it happens and how to cure it. That’s what happens when chronic pain gets diminished into sexist, classist and racist stereotypes in medicine.
SOURCES:
- “Conservative Surgery for the Infertile Female.” Fertility and Sterility. 1979.
- “Disparity in Endometriosis Treatment Among Racial/Ethnic Groups.” British Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology. 2019.
- “Representations of Endometriosis in the Popular Press: ‘The Career Woman’s Disease.’” Atlantis. 2003.
- “She Wants Medical World to Take ‘Endo’ Seriously.” Boston Globe. 1988.
- “The latest in endometriosis research: Ways forward.” Medical News Today. 2021.
#unladylikefacts #endometriosisawareness