Genusvetenskapens inomvetenskapliga utveckling inom medicinen

Abstract

In my artide, I analyse the process of the institutionalization in Sweden of gender research within academic medicine, which is dominated by positivistic assumptions. I focus on the resistance that gender researchers have met, the prerequisites for mastering this resistance, academic medicine's right of definition as well as the lessons we can learn for the future. The institutionalization of gender research is analysed on three arenas: the network arena, the state arena as well as the arena of the academic medicine. A central concern is how the power perspectives employed in gender research have been either combated or given the possibility to develop. The issues raised in this article - and exemplified with glimpses from the twenty year long history of medical gender research - indicate that it has been possible to develop medical gender research thanks to the network of gender researchers with support from women's political organisations as well as from the women's movement. The prerequisites for developing gender research in medicine have been: 1. Legitimacy and support from the highest university structures; 2. a grass roots movement of medical doctors, interested in gender research, which constituted the base of researchers within the field; 3. financial support, such as isolated state investments in different positions as well as research funding. I show that it has been possible to develop medical gender research aiming at power analysis within certain fields connected to the state arena, where the influence from academic medicine has been slight. Academic medicine has responded to this development with different strategies such as resistance, ignoring the matter, redefining concepts as well as expressing a guarded interest. I illustrate these strategies with various examples such as how academic medicine willingly accepts funding for women's studies/gender research and redefines it into biological research on women, while at the same time combating gendered power analysis and theoretical development.