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GENDER STUDIES

Vol. 9 No. 1/

Gender Studies Revista de Studii de Gen a Centrului Interdisciplinar de Studii de Gen al Universităţii de Vest din Timişoara

ISSN 1583-980X

As of January 2009 Gender Studies is indexed in the MLA International Bibliography; all our back issues are indexed in the Central and Eastern European Online Library (C.E.E.O.L.) at: www.ceeol.com.

GENDER STUDIES

Editor: Reghina Dascăl

Language consultant: Stuart Elford

ADVISORY BOARD:

Haleh Afshar - University of York

Pia Brînzeu - University of the West, Timişoara

Otilia Hedeşan - University of the West, Timişoara

Margaret R. Higonnet – University of Connecticut

Vesela Katsarova – University of Sofia

Hildegard Klein - University of Málaga

Krystyna Kujawinska-Courtney - University of Łódź

Isabel Marcus - State University of New York, Buffalo

Hortensia Pîrlog - University of the West, Timişoara

Nóra Séllei - University of Debrecen

EDITORIAL ADDRESS

All correspondence should be addressed to: Reghina Dascăl, Director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Gender Studies, English Department, University of the West Timişoara Blvd. V. Pârvan, no. 4-6, 300223 Timişoara Phone/fax (+ 40) 256 452 224; e-mail: reghina_dascal@yahoo.co.uk

COLOMBA LA RAGIONE Travelling with Wollstonecraft: Letters from Scandinavia / RICHARD R. E. KANIA Amanda Cross and “The Question of Max”/

The Conundrum of Gender

ROXANA D. CRUCEANU A Dandy Dismission of the Natural and Pure in Byron’s Don Juan /

ANEMONA ALB Avatars of Femininity: Ageism, Masks and All Things Stereotypical /

The Problematic Mother-Daughter Bond

MERYEM AYAN Tragic-Comic Twist: Daughters as Mothers /

HILDEGARD KLEIN Harper Regan - A Female Protagonist’s Flight from Personal Catastrophe: Her Voyage of Discovery and Return to Redemption /

Visions of Power/Powers of Vision

ADRIANA RĂDUCANU and London, the Occidentalist ‘City of CATHERINE MACMILLAN Man’ in Dirty Pretty Things and Island of Hope /

OLIVIA BǍLǍNESCU Authenticity vs Simulation in Pedro Almodóvar’s All About My Mother/

Gender, Culture, Society

RAMONA BRAN and Jacqueline and Michelle: White House ANDREEA PELE Wives /

REMINA SIMA Women’s Work - a Global Challenge /

OLIVIA BǍLǍNESCU We Must Be Displaced to Be Replaced : Issues of Geographical Displacement and Interior Exile /

REGHINA DASCĂL On Indian Women as Beneficiaries of the Argumentative Tradition of Indian Culture /

About the Authors /

Through the Lens of Gender. Sites of Gendered Representation and Discourse

Patients are criticized for not participating in decisions concerning their health and doctors are criticized for not allowing patients to participate in these decisions. Unlike in any other setting, the medical context is one where an individual’s health depends directly on the communicative interactions that occur. As stated earlier, introducing gender in medical interactions is far from being a theoretical issue with little practical benefit. According to the 2007 statistics on the health of the Hungarian population, more female patients visit doctors every year, making three visits to doctors for every two visits men make (HCSO 2008). This is not an especially Hungarian phenomenon, there are also more female than male patient visits in most EU countries, according to the pocket book issued by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labour (2008:41). Although the reasons and symptoms behind this issue are more than just related to illness, and a complete analysis is beyond the scope of this study, a communicative, gender-related approach can highlight some of the anomalies of the medical subculture (LAM 2008:336-7). The purpose of this paper is twofold: 1. to argue that doctor-patient interaction is a discourse of power; 2. to investigate that gender differences influence medical interactions, that is, the languages used by male and female doctors, are, in fact, different.

How the Patient’s Gender Affects Communication: Powerless or Simply Feminine? Two explanations emerge from the fact that more women visit doctors more frequently than men. The first is associated with gender roles, that is,

the female role in society has similar characteristics to the patient’s or “sick role” in our culture, and women are expected to play these roles. A girl from childhood on is encouraged to admit her pain, to freely ask for help and to expect and accept weakness in herself. Patients are expected to be obedient and to cooperate with doctors. Overall, it is more appropriate for women to express suffering and accept assistance than it is for men (Nathanson 1977:68-99). However, by expressing pain and asking for help, women leave themselves open to “learned helplessness,” which is the repeated inability to exert influence over one’s own situation (Malterud 1987). Learned helplessness leads to a condition where one chooses to play the role of the incapable and allows the stronger partner – in this case, the doctor – to take control of the situation. The focus on the patient role mirroring the female role in society is prevalent is literature (Borges 1986; Bernstein and Kane 2001; Gray 1998; Hausfeld 1976; Malterud 1987; Nathanson 1977). The stereotypical position is magnified when the patient is an older female who is more than willing to list her complaints to the doctor (Roos 2007:345). This emphasis on the female being willing, and in fact encouraged by society, to speak of her symptoms indicates that it is considered appropriate for females of all ages to seek help for illness and to passively accept the doctor’s assistance. This linking of the female role to the patient role emphasizes, by conspicuous omission, that the patient role is not a role expected from men. Thus, it is less appropriate for males to complain of symptoms and receive professional help than it is for females. While this may allow males to escape the condition of learned helplessness, it may push males into the potentially dangerous position of not asking for help when it is needed.

has been found by researchers that females often receive explanation from doctors that are less technical than the questions asked. It sounds as if they underestimated the level of the patients’ cognitive skills by coming up with a limited vocabulary embedded in paternalistic style. Interestingly, the web pages of online doctors (cyberdoc.com; americasdoctor.com;flora.org/ askdoctor.com; Netdoctor.co.uk; britmed.com; medicdirect.co.uk; informed.hu) follow the same routine. In forums like “Problem pages” or the “Debate sections” gynaecologists try to comfort stressed out women by saying: “you need to slow down and learn to relax” which definitely will put their mind at rest. Doctors try to “undershoot” the level of technicality to match the level of the patient (irrespective of gender).

The Question of Power To support the position that linguistic differences linked to gender reflect power differences, the differences in verbal behaviour revealed by research should cohere with some explicit conception of high- and low- power language. Lakoff’s much quoted argument (1973, 1975), which was not driven by data, links particular forms or categories of language to the pivotal concepts “tentativeness” and “uncertainty”. Women invoking “women’s language” use hedges, tag questions, and markers of politeness in order to soften claims or directives, rendering these speech acts less assertive, and less direct. The use of such linguistic forms may lead to judgments of low power, low competence, and so on, for example, the use of hesitations and hedges (“sort of” or “kind of”) (Hosman 2006:35). There is a good deal of research indicating that an impression of authoritativeness or, more generally, “high power” can be created through

the use of particular forms of language, e.g. rapid rate of speech, overuse of polite forms, or intensifiers (Brown 1980; Bradley 2002; Putnam 2002). If men display greater power linguistically, they would use less hedging or intensification, decrease tag questions, and use less polite forms. It should be pointed out that online medical conversations do not give evidence that there is significant difference in use of intensifiers or hedgers used by male and female clients, although in both cases it certainly carries the sign of uncertainty, and indicates powerlessness. Conversation analysts would argue that the connection between, for example, hedging and tentativeness is usually assumed rather than demonstrated empirically. It is also stipulated that any linguistic form can indicate tentativeness, or, contrary, assertiveness depending on the situational context. Politeness, for example, tends to be linked to deference, tentativeness, and so on, but this linkage can also be perceived as sarcasm.

Gender (In)equality in the Medical Profession Although there are today more female than male doctors in Hungary, the medical profession still bears the symptoms of gender inequality. Women in the medical profession have had difficulties being accepted in the surgical fields dominated by men for centuries, while men, who have been occupying the territory of former midwives become reputable obstetricians. The profession is clearly gendered: 84% of dermatologists are women, and there are more female dentists (58%) psychiatrists (68%), eye-specialists (77%), chest specialists (70%) and paediatricians (76%) than male. The number of female gynaecologists is surprisingly low compared to the US where women specialized in obstetrics and gynaecology outnumber men (data collected from www. medicinenet.com). The special fields

found between male and female doctors. According to the hypothesis if the doctor is female, then she will communicate in a more nurturing, relational, powerless, “female” way. However, a few researchers state there are some differences (Heins et al. 1979; Langwell 1982) but others have found no differences in the communicative behaviour of male and female doctors (Murphy-Cullen and Larsen 1984; Weisman and Teitelbaum 1985). Moreover, others searched for differences in patients’ expectations of male and female doctors instead of doctor’s communicative choices (Weisman and Teitelbaum 1985). In the linguistic representation of power doctors’ choice of communicative style displays tokens of the “Pygmalion effect” (Rosenthal 1992:86). Thus, a person using “high power” style may give the impression of having been in a/the power position – that he “knows” better/the best – and this may impel others to behave deferentially. This, in turn, may trigger the person to become, in fact, more authoritative. The findings of online research analysis of gynaecologists’ interactions on medical websites show that female doctors give long, detailed, and reassuring answers to female patients’ queries, suggesting both competence and compassion while male doctors’ advice is likely to be educational, prompt, unambiguous, wrapped in an extremely polite, paternalizing style. However, the results do not loudly proclaim female doctors to be more caring, or even very different, their communication style conceals a different level of power. According to offline observations and recordings female doctors ask more questions designed to elicit the patient’s feelings and make more frequent attempts to restate the patient’s worries in a non-judgmental manner. Their expertise is underpinned by concrete data, facts, and medical

terms: a professional speaking “wo/manly”. A (male) doctor’s credibility undoubtedly comes from the “possessed” knowledge of high power, which used to be accessible for men – this credit used to have been a male privilege for centuries which he is now willing to share with the ignorant. He can even make comments or give counselling on his own preference. It is of little surprise, then, that, for the dilettanti, doctors’ professional accomplishment is judged upon their conversational style. The assumption here is that the profession is genuinely male, and he has to act accordingly.

Conclusion The health care setting mirrors society in a way that those holding the power are usually male physicians while those with less access to it are predominantly female. The medical context reflects the recent changes in society as individuals have begun to cross the thresholds of traditional gender-roles in their career choices. Preliminary findings seem to indicate that females take on the attitude of those in power when entering the traditionally male realm of the medical profession, while males carry their power with them into the mainly female practice of nursing. Much more live research needs to be done to promote hospital ward observations where female doctors in their interactions with patients speak from a male position with their acquired power-speech, like a professional, while male doctors speaking the language of authority take on the heritage of the past “professionally”. The issue of gendered communication in medical settings stirs up a lot of queries but answers only a few. There is only one definite point to consider: we are all mortal and we are all going to die one day. Before that everybody is entitled to get fair treatment irrespective of the patient’s or the

Heins, M. et al. 1979. ‘Attitudes of Women and Men Physicians’ in American Journal Public Health. 69/11, pp. 1132–1139. Hosman, L.A. 2006. ‘Powerful and Powerless Language Forms’ in Journal of Language and Social Psychology. 25/1, pp. 33-46. Lakoff, R. 1973. The Logic of Politeness or Minding your P’s and Q’s. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. 9. ------- 1975. Language and Women’s Place. New York: Harper & Row. Langwell, KM. 1982. ‘Factors Affecting the Incomes of Men and Women Physicians: Further Explorations’ in Journal of Human Resources. 17, pp. 261-75. Lunn, S. et al. 1998. ‘The Effect of Gender upon Doctor-Patient Interaction’ in Psychology & Health. 13/6, pp. 975-986. Malterud, K. 1987. The Doctor who Cried. London: Verso. Murphy-Cullen, C.L. and Larsen, L.C. 1984. ‘Interaction between the Socio-Demographic Variables of Physicians and their Patients: its Impact upon Patient Satisfaction’ in Social Science and Medicine. 19, pp.163-166. Nathanson, C.A. 1977. ‘Sex Roles as Variables in Preventive Health Behaviour’ in Journal of Community Health. 3, pp. 68-92. Putnam, H. 1975. Mind, Language and Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 325-342. ----------2002. The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Roos, N.R et al. 2007. ‘Female and Physician: a Sex Role Incongruity’ in Journal of Medical Education. 52(4), pp. 345–346. Rosenthal, R. and L. Jacobson. 1992. Pygmalion in the Classroom: Teacher Expectation and Pupils' Intellectual Development. New York: Irvington Publishers. Weisman C.S. and M.A. Teitelbaum. 1985. ‘Physician Gender and the Physician-Patient Relationship: Recent Evidence and Relevant Questions’ in Social Science & Medicine. 20(11), pp.1119–1127. [Online]. Available: http://ec.europa.eu/health-eu/index_en.htm [4 March 2009].

GENDERED POLITICAL DISCOURSE – HOW WOMEN FIND

THEIR WAY IN THE PENALTY AREA OF THE POLITICAL

BATTLEFIELD

BILJANA RADIĆ-BOJANIĆ

Faculty of Philosophy, Novi Sad NADEŽDA SILAŠKI Faculty of Economics, Belgrade

Abstract : The article is set within the frameworks of Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Critical Discourse Analysis and deals with the gendering of political discourse in Serbia manifested through the pervasiveness of SPORT and WAR metaphors in today’s political language as used by politicians themselves as well as by newspaper reporters as the main mediators between the political parties and voters, in a way that supports hegemonic masculinity and discourages women from participating in political life. Key words : political discourse, SPORT metaphors, WAR metaphors, masculinity, gender bias.

1. Introduction By political discourse in this paper we mean not only internal political communication, referring to “all forms of discourse that concern first of all the functioning of politics within political institutions, i.e. governmental bodies, parties or other organisations” (Schäffner 1996:202), but also external political communication, aimed at the general public, as well as the language used by reporters and political commentators as the main mediators between the political parties and voters. Such a broad approach to political discourse enables us, within the framework of Critical Discourse