ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Antimicrobial resistance: A reflection of gender structures

• In Event: Crafts of Microbes: Women and Gender from Antibiotics to Genetic Engineering and the Microbiome

English Abstract

This presentation emerges from the ongoing thesis focused on the study of antibiotic resistance as a public problem in Spain, through the study of the national and regional press (4 newspapers) between 1951 and 2023, based on the Frame Analysis (by E. Goffman) and discourse analysis. This study allows us to draw various framings, both primary and secondary, which reveals the aspects that are publicised as well as those that are erased. Therefore, the problem of antibiotic resistance becomes a reflexion on social, economic and political structures, including gender issues.
The first reflexion is based on the media coverage of major scientific figures in the field of antibiotics, exclusively male, such as Alexander Fleming, Howard Walter Florey and Ernst Chain. This media coverage completely omits the female scientists involved, thereby it creates a narrative based solely on the male scientific work and reinforces a pre-existing male scientific authority. At the same time, this narrative gap obscures the advances made possible by female scientists such as Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin, Mary Hunt or Mary Ethel Florey.
The second reflexion arises from the general establishment of antibiotic resistance as a problem of antibiotic consumption. In this context, responsibility is attributed to a society of consumers of these drugs. However, when it comes to consumption among children, a subcategory emerges: the mothers, who bear the responsibility for child care as well as responsibility for the misuse of antibiotics.

Author

• Elodie Rosanne Santiago, University of the Basque Country