Understanding disorder, the female body and femininity: A qualitative exploration of the experiences of Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome treatment

• Author / Creator

  Chowdhuri, Samadrita

• Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome or PCOS is a condition characterized by different symptoms of menstrual abnormalities, overweight and obesity, acne, hair loss, and hirsutism (male hair growth pattern), based on the key feature of an increase in androgen synthesis by the ovaries. This is a condition that has been stated to be incurable and treatments are mostly directed at masking the symptoms and regulating hormonal functionality. PCOS is labelled as a condition based on the assumption that androgen excess is not part of embodied ‘femininity’. The diagnosis centers on clinical indicators of "increased" male hormones and the gender binary essentially shapes the medical diagnosis and treatment for this condition. This suggests a problem with PCOS patients' bodies since they depart from normal gender embodiment.
  This research examined factors and symptoms related to androgen excess that are problematised by the participants in this study, and explores how this condition goes beyond its physiological problems and impacts women’s identities and sense of being. It explored women’s perspective of the disorder, their illness and treatment experience and its connection with their perceptions of ‘femininity’ and ‘womanhood’. It aimed to get a more nuanced knowledge of the experiences of how women identify their bodies in response to living with a gendered disease.
  This qualitative study used a feminist narrative research approach with semi-structured interviews and one focus group, along with a body mapping exercise, to gather lived experiences of eighteen Indian and Indo-Canadian women living in Edmonton, Alberta (age category 18-30 years). It tried to understand how these women navigated PCOS symptomatology and treatment. It focused on their meaning-making of the condition and how it affected women’s lives.
  The findings of this study reflected that PCOS is related to broader biomedical and socio-cultural ideals of femininity, so much so that for the participants, health and normative femininity get conflated. For women, struggles with PCOS were mainly struggles of ‘being a normal woman’ where they try to fix their bodily symptoms, menstrual cycles and their concerns about future motherhood. They experience incoherence with an ideal healthy female body (both in terms of appearance and abilities) and constantly try to reshape their bodies, signifying that they are in fact always trying to be a woman, authenticating their internal sense of gender. These navigating strategies were developed on the basis of symptom priorities and a constructed health hierarchy to get the desired female body, which were again based on social interactions with people and medical authorities.
  Treatment narratives of the women in this study were largely based on whether and how the treatment helped them with symptoms associated with aspects or manifestations of femininity. There were two distinct narratives held by different women about treatment. The most prominent one was that they did not think the treatment method was useful for them, since they still felt ‘’unfeminine’’. The secondary narrative was that they felt and looked healthier and considered treatment to have improved their conditions, where being healthy was often synonymous with womanhood.
  The lines between health, femininity and womanhood get blurred- for women their priorities are focused on making their bodies look more feminine and fertile. For medical doctors, the female body is healthy only when it has the capacity to procreate. In general, women in this study, equated ‘’healthy’’ and ‘’feminine’’. They were more apprehensive about how their appearance and internal functionality differs from what is expected of a ‘’normal’’ woman.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome
  • embodiment
  • lived experiences
  • illness and treatment narratives
  • stigma
  • womanhood and femininity

• Graduation date

  Fall 2024

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Arts

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-58ny-7v64

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Library with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.