[Last modified: October, 18 2024 02:31 PM]
My research focuses on how the illness narratives of women’s gynecological diseases reveal the disempowerment of women within medical system and patriarchal society. As an Asian woman, I am an “outsider” culturally. This might make it hard for me to gain the trust of the targeted group, leading them to be unwilling to join my interviews. Even if I manage to enter the field, the unavoidable cultural and geographical differences might make the participants reserved about sharing their feelings and experiences. Although I do not yet have an effective solution to this issue, I think that building trust through long-term fieldwork or using cultural intermediaries to bridge these differences might work.
Also as an Asian woman, my marginal status in Western society may give me a more sensitive insight into inequalities in the medical system, both in terms of gender and race. For instance, one major challenge faced by non-Western women is that their medical needs and expressions of illness are often ignored or misunderstood. This often results from medical decision-makers and providers’ ignorance or misunderstanding of cultural differences. Women from certain cultural backgrounds may express pain or symptoms of illness in a more subdued manner, which could be misinterpreted by medical professionals unfamiliar with this style of expression as mild or not serious.
One thing I want to mention is that in “Writing Against Culture”, the author criticizes the concept of “culture” in traditional anthropology. She argues that this concept reinforces the boundaries between researchers and their subjects and can lead to an oversimplified and fixed view of the complexity and dynamic changes within “cultures”. From this perspective, when I discuss how women are represented and understood in the medical system and patriarchal society, I must be careful not to reduce women patients’ experiences to the products of a single cultural or social structure. Instead, I need to uncover and represent the multiple identities and experiences women have within the medical system, not just their roles as patients. This means that my research should focus not only on how women are physically affected by diseases but also consider how they construct their identities actively and passively within cultural and social structures. For example, a woman might be a patient, a mother, a professional and a member of a specific cultural group, with her health experiences resulting from the interaction of these identities.