Women in the oncological discourse: an empirical approach to democratization of medical knowledge

Abstract

The paper due to social constructionist framework puts breast cancer in the category of discourse. This approach involves asking questions about holders of medical knowledge and its sources, forms and sharing. The point is not to challenge the fact, that diseases exist indeed. It is rather about drawing our attention to complex relations between medical knowledge and the social world. Sharp picture of objective knowledge is getting blurred when we collate various language representations which order and interpret experiences concerning health and disease differently. On empirical ground the analysis is founded on the results of quantitative research conducted among three groups of women. They were expected to differ in the level of being informed about breast cancer prevention and therapy. Two groups of younger women (students from two cities – a big and a smaller one) were included in the sample. The third group of respondents came from a small locality with a population of nearly ten thousand people and in this case women in perimenopausal age prevailed. We used a survey questionnaire as a research instrument and it was developed to explain in extended way the psychosocial background of health and disease issues. For this article’s needs we chose the questions as follows: healthy lifestyle, female body, anxiety over breast cancer and other illnesses, patients’ communication expectations to physicians, available for patients and effective sources of medical knowledge used for understanding their own health problems.