Dismembering Women

by Claire JD Potter*

A Palaver Occasional Paper

‘Dismembering women’ by a former senior Australian academic with a background in feminist studies and education provides a powerful and disturbing account of one woman’s disastrous experiences within the Australian medical system in the late 1990s. The essay raises the problem of the longstanding tension between the conceptual and institutional structures of medicine and women’s experiences, even in the so-called ‘developed’ world, including limitations of research, communication, consent, consultation, responses to pain and other physical needs. 

The essay has provoked the curation of a ‘Dismembering women’ symposium, to be hosted on the website of Journal of Bioethical Inquiry: an interdisciplinary forum for ethical and legal debate (JBI) (Home | Journal of Bioethical Inquiry | Springer Nature Link). The symposium will reflect on the essay and the issues it raises for contemporary scholars and practitioners from a wide range of fields internationally. The symposium will be posted on the JBI website from 2027.  

*Pseudonym