THE GOOD, THE NORMAL AND THE HEALTHY - THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF MEDICAL KNOWLEDGE ABOUT WOMEN

This article examines obstetric and gynecologic knowledge in the 1950s. It shows how socio-cultural normative categories infused the medical knowledge of female physiology, pregnancy, and labour, even though that knowledge was represented by medicine as objective, technical, and autonomous from the social realm. It examines how the distinction between the technical and the social was constituted and displayed as a powerful resource for physicians. In effect, this resource enabled physicians to define and regulate the social world of women by surveilling, ''normalizing,'' and pathologizing their bodies and their conduct.