'I know my own body': Power and resistance in women's experiences of medical interactions

Feminist analyses of medical power relations commonly proceed from two differing conceptualizations of power; one view proceeds from the assumption that power is relational and productive, the other assumes that power is hierarchical and repressive. This study uses in-depth interviews with 20 women in order to examine the nature of medical power relations, specifically focusing on the ways in which women resist physician applications of medical power. Results indicate that the women recognized and resisted physicians' attempts to use medical power techniques, particularly the discounting of the women's knowledge of their own bodies. The women resisted, either directly or indirectly, by privileging their experiential knowledge over physicians' truth claims, and terminating their relationships with problematic doctors and initiating relationships with more compliant physicians. Although the women were, to varying degrees, influenced by biomedical constructions of female embodiment, their experiences in medical power relations demonstrate that a variety of knowledges (medical, embodied and empathic experiential knowledge, as well as knowledge produced through other power/knowledge regimes) contribute to embodied subjectivity. The implications of this study have relevance for theorizing the relationship between women's health needs, gendered embodiment and medicalization.