Why Chronic Illness is a Feminist Issue
When people hear of conditions like Fibromyalgia, ME/CFS, Endometriosis and Lupus, they are often only vaguely aware of what they are and almost always ignorant of how they affect individual sufferers. There are so many different illnesses out there and no one person can know of all of them. But the above mentioned are in fact quite common, and I bet you know of someone who has at least one of these syndromes/diseases. You might assume that, given their prevalence, a great deal of research and funding has gone into these illnesses, but the opposite is true . These conditions primarily affect women, and medicine was and still is a largely male-dominated field, from almost all-male animal studies to majority male human studies . The gatekeepers to the profession are also mostly men, meaning they are less likely to study illnesses that especially affect women. Indeed, non-life threatening illnesses dominated by female patients often lack funding and research and are poorly...