The Female Animal: Medical and Biological Views of Woman and Her Role in Nineteenth-Century America

Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll; Rosenberg, Charles

doi:10.2307/2936779

Cited by 195 publications

(21 citation statements)

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“…Medical knowledge has long served as a powerful resource for justifying cultural gender norms, a trend that was only magnified with the rising social significance of scientific and biological knowledge in recent centuries (Rosenberg and Smith-Rosenberg 1997 [1976]). Scientific and medical claims about women and men are shaped by normative expectations about their proper roles in society, as well as ideals of femininity and masculinity (Ehrenreich and English 2005 [1978]; Laqueur 1990).…”

Section: Gendered Knowledge and Reproductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

More and Less than Equal

Almeling

Waggoner

2013

Gender & Society

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In both social science and medicine, research on reproduction generally focuses on women. In this article, we examine how men’s reproductive contributions are understood. We develop an analytic framework that brings together Cynthia Daniels’ conceptualization of reproductive masculinity (2006) with a staged view of reproduction, where the stages include the period before conception, conception, gestation, and birth. Drawing on data from two medical sites that are oriented to the period before pregnancy (preconception health care and sperm banks), we examine how gendered knowledge about reproduction produces different reproductive equations in different stages of the reproductive process. We conclude with a new research agenda that emerges from rethinking the role of men and masculinity in reproduction.

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Section: Gendered Knowledge and Reproductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

More and Less than Equal

Almeling

Waggoner

2013

Gender & Society

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“…As rational animals, men had greater potential for morality, and exercise was a mode of purification of mind and body. Women, by contrast, were immoral subjects from birth, their bodies binding them to nature48 and, as such, exercise could only exacerbate this nature. Morality and the hygienic movement to sanitise women was such that it had to enable them to fulfil their natural, biological, domestic duties.…”

Section: Moderation Of Exercise Morality and Maternal Duties For Thementioning

confidence: 99%

Women, ‘madness’ and exercise

Hardes

2018

Med Humanities

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The positive relationship between exercise and mental health is often taken for granted in today’s society, despite the lack of academic literature evidencing this symbiosis. Gender is considered a significant determinant in a number of mental health diagnoses. Indeed, women are considered twice as likely as men to experience the most pervasive mental health condition, depression. Exercise for women’s mental health is promoted through various macrolevel charity, as well as microlevel, campaigns that influence government healthcare policy and National Health Service guidelines. Indeed, ‘exercise prescriptions’ in the treatment of depression is not uncommon. Yet, this link between exercise as a treatment for women’s mental health has not always been so pervasive. In fact, an examination of asylum reports and medical journals from the late 19th century highlights a significant shift in attitude towards the role of exercise in the treatment of women’s emotional states and mental health. This paper specifically examines how this treatment of women’s mental health through exercise has moved from what might be regarded as a focus on exercise as a ‘cause’ of women’s mental ailments to exercise promoted as a ‘cure’. Unpacking the changing medical attitudes towards exercise for women in line with larger sociopolitical and historic contexts reveals that while this shift towards exercise promotion might prima facie appear as a less essentialist view of women and their mental and physical states, it inevitably remains tied to larger policy and governance agendas. New modes of exercise ‘treatment’ for women’s mental health are not politically neutral and, thus, what appear to emerge as forms of liberation are, in actuality, subtler forms of regulation.

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“…In response to growing feminist stirrings in the last decades of the ninetccnth century, conservative male physicians "found thernselves the spokespersons for the affirmation of traditional cultural verities" (Morantz-Sanchez, 1985:207), and some were particularly assiduous in attcmpting to shore up the traditional female role through the uncritical application of scientific and pseudo-scientific ideas and theories and the heavy-handed use of professional authority (Smith-Rosenberg, 1973). This commitment led them "to grasp at any fact, or alleged fact, of physiology, evolution or anthropometry which might be worked into a system of evidence in support of woman's traditional role" (Mosedale, 1978:3).…”

Section: Please Scroll Down For Articlementioning

confidence: 99%

"Of No Use Without Health"

Vertinsky

1988

Women & Health

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In the rapidly changing society of the late nineteenth century, American medical theory and practice functioned as a social force to shape and limit the ways in which females viewed their physical potential. This paper analyzes the social and physical expectations which were elaborated for and experienced by middle-class urban females throughout their life span, identifies the kinds of exercise prescriptions which were promoted by doctors to assist women in fulfilling these expectations at different life stages and points out the underlying significance of these prescriptions in defining and perpetuating notions of females' limited physical capabilities. For late nineteenth century women, two significant influences upon their body behavior were: the physical realities of sickness and early death which modified, or curtailed female energy and physical capacity; and the discursive practices of medical experts and scientists concerning the identification and etiology of female ill-health and disease and their agreed upon therapies for assisting women to maintain, or regain their health. An understanding of the disease model which informed medical prescriptions for exercise explains, in part, why physicians concentrated their efforts upon women's reproductive capacity and lifestyle habits-rather than upon the widespread and devastating diseases that took such a toll upon women before the turn of the twentieth century.

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The Female Animal: Medical and Biological Views of Woman and Her Role in Nineteenth-Century America

Cited by 195 publications

References 0 publications

More and Less than Equal

More and Less than Equal

Women, ‘madness’ and exercise

"Of No Use Without Health"

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