Constructions of Medical Misogyny: A Corpus-assisted Study of Women's Healthcare Narratives in Media Texts

Keywords

corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, epistemic injustice, gender bias, medical misogyny, nursing practice

Abstract

Background: Internationally, women continue to report health inequities that are increasingly being framed as medical misogyny, yet the linguistic mechanisms underpinning them remain understudied.

Objective: To examine the discourse through which women's healthcare experiences are publicly framed and interpreted as medical misogyny.

Methods: A 37,327-word corpus was constructed and analysed using established corpus-assisted discourse study approaches. The software 'AntConc' was used to identify frequent and collocated words. Concordance line analysis identified four discursive patterns operating across the genres represented within the corpus.

Results: Four discursive patterns were identified: (1) professional authority and normalisation, (2) epistemic struggle, (3) communicative asymmetry, and (4) psychiatric containment. These patterns were realised through linguistic strategies such as normalising formulations, categorical exclusion, unidirectional "telling", and pathologising attributions.

Conclusions: Understanding how language may undermine women's credibility, and how diagnostic uncertainty may be gendered, is important nursing knowledge. As social agents and clinical communicators, nurses are positioned to recognise and interrupt these discursive patterns. Reflexive documentation practices, and advocacy within multidisciplinary teams, may support more equitable clinical encounters and help address gendered barriers in healthcare. Reporting followed the COREQ checklist.

Impact statement: This study reveals linguistic patterns of medical misogyny in news media, equipping nurses with discursive awareness to better recognise and interrupt epistemic exclusion through reflexive documentation and advocacy. Such efforts may support more equitable care and gender-informed clinical practice.

Original Publication Citation

Bond, C., Jackson, D., & Watson, A. L. (2026). Constructions of Medical Misogyny: A Corpus-assisted Study of Women's Healthcare Narratives in Media Texts. Contemporary nurse, 1–15. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/10376178.2026.2701245

Document Type

Peer-Reviewed Article

Publication Date

2026-07-24

Publisher

Contemporary Nurse

Language

English

College

Nursing

University Standing at Time of Publication

Assistant Professor

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