A few days ago, I came across a story online about two young female engineers who created a new type of vaginal speculum. For those who are not women, or doctors, or don’t regularly participate in general-knowledge game shows, a speculum is the medical tool inserted into the vagina to “facilitate” all types of gynecological exams, including the well-known Pap test.
The quotation marks around “facilitate” are intentional. That’s because the common speculum—originally invented in the mid-19th century by American Marion Sims, later improved around 1870 by his compatriot Frank Graves, and still used in essentially the same form today—facilitated, without quotation marks, not the examined women but the doctors, who for the majority of these nearly 150 years were, of course, men.
“That’s it”
We are not even surprised that over the course of this century and a half, almost no one bothered to improve this tool, to make it more “friendly” for the patient. I understand that to some—or even to some women—this entire discussion may sound like a luxury complaint.
In an age of constant pursuit of health and wellness, the logic expected is: “this is the exam, this is the tool used for it, you need to go and get it done.”
And it is precisely in the overturning of this logic that the problem with the lack of improvement to the speculum lies. Because a recent study showed that around 35% of women surveyed said they feel fear or pain during gynecological exams—something that often leads to avoiding necessary checkups. One of the main reasons? The painful and uncomfortable experience with this very tool.
Meaning that one in three women doesn’t undergo a vital test like the Pap smear because of this.
From one perspective, of course, the speculum is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the misogyny that has characterized—and still characterizes—the history of medicine. Even today, clinical trials and drug testing are based on male physiology, resulting in women not receiving proper care or being at risk of side effects.
Even today, women’s pain is more often dismissed as psychosomatic compared to men’s, leading to delayed diagnoses of serious conditions. Even today, women’s sexual health and reproductive choices are often determined by the political decisions of men.
Even today—or rather, especially today—the process of childbirth has become almost industrialized through cesarean section, in the name of questionable safety. At least today, we’ve moved past what has long been my favorite example of medical sexism.
During the time when lobotomy was legal—and although there are no exact national statistics—it’s estimated that women made up more than 60% of those who underwent the procedure.
One number, it took Japan’s Ministry of Health 35 years to approve the morning-after pill, and only six months to approve Viagra.
And one final note, since we’ve returned to the past. The aforementioned Marion Sims, inventor of the early version of the modern speculum—and I say “modern” because the instrument existed in some form since Ancient Rome—was retrospectively accused a few years ago of conducting experiments on enslaved African American women and performing surgeries without anesthesia.
If one can claim it was a mitigating factor that slavery was still a reality then, a few years before the American Civil War, and that anesthesia was a very recent invention, what excuse do we have nearly two centuries later to allow the continuation of a dangerous patriarchal mindset in the practice of medicine?
