Unwell Women

Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made World

By: Elinor Cleghorn

Narrated by: Hanako Footman

A trailblazing, conversation-starting history of women’s health - from the earliest medical ideas about women’s illnesses to hormones and autoimmune diseases - brought together in a fascinating, sweeping narrative.

Elinor Cleghorn became an unwell woman 10 years ago. She was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease after a long period of being told her symptoms were anything from psychosomatic to a possible pregnancy. As Elinor learned to live with her unpredictable disease, she turned to history for answers, and found an enraging legacy of suffering, mystification, and misdiagnosis.

In Unwell Women, Elinor Cleghorn traces the almost unbelievable history of how medicine has failed women by treating their bodies as alien and other, often to perilous effect. The result is an authoritative and groundbreaking exploration of the relationship between women and medical practice, from the "wandering womb" of Ancient Greece to the rise of witch trials across Europe, and from the dawn of hysteria as a catchall for difficult-to-diagnose disorders to the first forays into autoimmunity and the shifting understanding of hormones, menstruation, menopause, and conditions like endometriosis.

Packed with character studies and case histories of women who have suffered, challenged, and rewritten medical orthodoxy - and the men who controlled their fate - this is a revolutionary examination of the relationship between women, illness, and medicine. With these case histories, Elinor pays homage to the women who suffered so strides could be made, and shows how being unwell has become normalized in society and culture, where women have long been distrusted as reliable narrators of their own bodies and pain. But the time for real change is long overdue: answers reside in the body, in the testimonies of unwell women - and their lives depend on medicine learning to listen.

©2021 Elinor Cleghorn (P)2021 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“In Unwell Women, the British scholar Elinor Cleghorn makes the insidious impact of gender bias on women’s health starkly and appallingly explicit.... It’s impossible to read Unwell Women without grief, frustration and a growing sense of righteous anger.” (Janice P. Nimura, The New York Times)

“The book is a call to arms for any woman who feels that doctors have not adequately addressed her illness or pain.” (The Washington Post)

“Researcher Cleghorn provides an essential history of misogyny in health care.... This clear-eyed assessment is both a catalog of how medicine has been complicit in female oppression and a call to action for drastic reform.” (Scientific American)

“An intriguing exploration of the history of women’s health.... Unwell Women by Elinor Cleghorn shows us that without acknowledgment and understanding of these issues, these ills will continue on into new generations and in untold eras. We owe it to ourselves as a society to understand.” (The Chicago Review of Books)

I have a fatal autoimmune disease too

I suffer with Stiff Person Syndrome, a one in a million occurrence worldwide. It took THIRTY YEARS to get a diagnosis by which time I was end stage, partially paralyzed, neurologically challenged, and devoid of feeling emotions. At the beginning I was handed antidepressant after antidepressant, told my symptoms weren’t real, that I was just unhappy and wanted to be sick.

I have become increasingly aware of medical gender bias, especially given my own very rare diagnosis, but I didn’t understand the full history behind it. I do now. This book is an excellent explanation of the way society has viewed women and therefore the lack of appropriate medical care. Thank you to the author for her exhaustive research and plain language explanation of why women are seen as less important in medicine and the greater world.

Eye-opening history

This an excellent historical review of the status of women in society and how they have been treated and mistreated with respect to their healthcare

Fascinating history on women health

Thanks to the author for the fascinating review on how women's health has been treated in history. Everyone should read it!

Get ready to rage

Excellent work. I especially appreciated the tie in to modern day and the author’s own experience at the end.
But be ready to want to scream at how women were and continue to be treated.

I couldn’t have said it better myself

This, unfortunately, resonated with me in ways I wish it wouldn’t. Being a young unwell, black woman has created so many infuriating moments in my life. I’ve been passed around from specialist to specialist- poked and prodded and dismissed after one inconclusive test result. I have been violated in so many ways and have not been able to go to appointments without someone coming to advocate for me. It is incredibly disheartening to be looked at (a rare occurrence) and told “Your results aren’t indicative of there being any underlying cause. We can run more tests, but there isn’t anything that we can do at this time”. I hate that this is the world that I experience, it has ruined so many aspects of my life because I am increasingly more distraught and angry and have no energy to continue to defend myself. This gives me hope… maybe one day, someone will figure out what’s been going on in my body… I hope I get to see that day.

Tough but important book

It is so sad to hear how little the treatment of unwell women has improved over time. But it did have an inspiring end and is an important book!

Put On Your Seatbelt

I can't emphasize the importance and need for this book. It absolutely opened my eyes and helped validate things I've experienced as a patient with a uterus. Everyone should read this book, especially those working in healthcare and ESPECIALLY those working in reproductive health.

At times it was excruciating to hear about the things women have endured throughout history due to racism, sexism, classism, etc. but learning our history is imperative if we want to grow better from it.

**Extra points for the narrator, she had an animated, but a soothing voice that really held my attention the whole time! Thank you Elinor Cleghorn for this important work!

Fascinating and slightly depressing

As a healthcare provider I am familiar with the bias against women as emotional and some days it feels like the only things offered to my female patients by traditional providers are anti-depressants with no real interest in finding out why they are in pain or fatigued, or otherwise failing to thrive, but I didn’t realize how far back these misconceptions went in history, and how much they still influence the research and science even today. Highly recommend it for anyone serious about improving women’s healthcare.

Required Reading

Any woman or ally thereof should give this a listen/read. It is so well-researched, insightful, and a little unsettling. So helpful in understanding women's bodies in connection to medicine, history, and the social fabric.

Poor Narration

Excellent, thoroughly researched book. The narrator’s mispronunciations were difficult to get through. No, it wasn’t just her accent or UK English vs US English. Long read, but valuable.