GenDis - Gendered Chronic Disease, Embodied Differences and Biomedical Knowledge

The project examines the management of gendered chronic illness at the intersection of personalized medicine, rationalization of medicine and global drug shortages. It focuses on endometriosis, migraine and fibromyalgia, which are all characterized by episodes of pain and debated in terms of their link to gendered embodied processes.

The data consists of bioscience research literature and media accounts of the diseases, online platforms and discussion forums for patients, and interviews and observations among patient organizations, people living with a chronic illness, clinicians treating patients, governmental and public health officials involved in drafting treatment guidelines, representatives of pharmaceutical industry as well as two biomedical research institutions.

The aim is to understand the emerging uses of the concept of gender and embodied differences in increasingly personalized and rationalized medicine as well as the changing preconditions of living with a gendered chronic illness. The project also theorizes chronic pain as an embodied, intersectional phenomenon and explores the temporality of chronicity through questions of age.

The research is funded by the Academy of Finland and Kone Foundation. The project is led by Academy Research Fellow Venla Oikkonen.

Read more about the project: https://projects.tuni.fi/gendis-en/