‘Women get this’: gendered meanings of chronic pelvic pain

Victoria M. Grace, Sara MacBride‐Stewart
In: Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine · 2006 · vol. 11(1) , pp. 47–67 · doi:10.1177/1363459307070803 · PMID:17158831 · W2165018566
article OA: closed CC0 ⤵ 16 in-corpus citations
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⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-08 ⓘ

This study analyzed interviews with 40 New Zealand women, revealing they use mechanistic medical language and expressions of "not knowing" to normalize their chronic pelvic pain, thereby constructing it as intrinsically gendered.

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Abstract

Chronic pelvic pain in women is a key site through which explorations of the meanings of female gender and pain might further insights into the broader question of the embodied experience of women in relation to pain. A biocultural approach is used to present an analysis of interviews with 40 New Zealand women in which they reflect on 'how come' they have chronic pelvic pain. Women consistently employ a mechanistic rendition of medical discourse and understandings in their constructions of 'how come' they have pain, accompanied by a reiteration of 'not knowing' and a normalizing of their pelvic pain. We explore how this normalizing works within the narratives to establish women's pelvic pain as intrinsically gendered. Etiological meanings that are constructed in medical terms and yet are unable to be interpreted within a dualist frame of normality and pathology, we argue, permeate and shape gendered experience of chronic pain conditions.

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chronic_pelvic_pain

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