Doctors dismissed these women as hysterical. Now they're fighting back
There’s a memory, or more specifically a moment, that came to define Heidi Metcalf’s second birth.
It wasn’t saying goodbye to her husband and newborn before being wheeled into an operating theatre, or the heart attack she thought she was having as she lay there on the table.
It was when a male obstetrician “ripped the placenta” out of her body, without word or warning.
A nurse, Ms Metcalf knows the intervention - while immensely painful - was necessary. She couldn't push it out naturally, which was causing potentially fatal bleeding.
But she hadn’t “seen or met this man before”, and she can’t get past the fact that her consent, during one of the most traumatic experiences of her life, “meant so little”.
“It felt like a violation - I needed to feel involved in what was happening to my body, and not just like a bystander.”
Ms Metcalf is one of thousands of Australian women who have come forward to tell their stories, after the federal government assembled a team of experts to tackle what it calls “medical misogyny”.
So far, they have uncovered that a staggering two-thirds of females nationwide have encountered gender bias or discrimination in healthcare.
And many say it is taking place when they're at their most vulnerable, such as during intimate examinations, or like Ms Metcalf, while in labour. Others report having their pain dismissed or dangerously misdiagnosed.
Source: The Guardian, 2 July 2024