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The Palgrave Handbook of Gender and Healthcare pp 107–122Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Gender and the Medicalization of Healthcare

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Abstract

Medicalization is a key concept of modernity, ubiquitously used in the social and medical sciences since the 1970s. We begin by adopting what sociologist Peter Conrad calls its essential meaning: ‘defining a problem in medical terms, usually as an illness or disorder, or using a medical intervention to treat it’ (Conrad, 2005: 3, emphasis in the original). In this large and growing field, scholars generally agree that medicalization was a critical — if not fundamental — transformation of the 20th century. As we will show in this chapter, scholars disagree about its definitions, its connection with the dynamics and conceptual apparatuses of modernity and a global economy, and its cultural situatedness.

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Authors
  1. Susan E. Bell
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  2. Anne E. Figert
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Bath, UK

    Ellen Kuhlmann

  2. University of Leicester, UK

    Ellen Annandale

Copyright information

© 2010 Susan E. Bell and Anne E. Figert

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Cite this chapter

Bell, S.E., Figert, A.E. (2010). Gender and the Medicalization of Healthcare. In: Kuhlmann, E., Annandale, E. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Gender and Healthcare. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230290334_7

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