She now works as a freelance writer and researcher and lives in Sussex. In 2017, she was shortlisted for the Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize, and she has since written creatively about her experience of chronic illness for publications including Ache (UK) and Westerly (AUS). British cultural historian Elinor Cleghorn says the loss of fertility inflicts a loss of relevance. She has given talks and lectures at the British Film Institute, where she has been a regular contributor to the education program, Tate Modern, and ICA London, and she has appeared on the BBC Radio 4 discussion show The Forum. Because we value women still for their appearance and their reproductive abilities, once women reach menopause we think they’re past their use-by date. After receiving her PhD in humanities and cultural studies in 2012, She worked for three years as a postdoctoral researcher at the Ruskin School of Art at the University of Oxford on an interdisciplinary arts and medical humanities project. In her book UNWELL WOMEN: Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made World, Cleghorn traces the almost unbelievable history of how medicine has failed women by treating their bodies as alien and other, often to perilous effect.Įlinor Cleghorn has a background in feminist culture and history, and her critical writing has been published in several academic journals, including Screen. As she learned to live with her unpredictable disease she turned to history for answers, and found an enraging legacy of suffering, mystification, and misdiagnosis. It documents how women’s bodies have almost always been treated as inherently deficient or even defective. The theme, across countries and time periods, is centered on disbelief. She was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease after a long period of being told her symptoms were anything from psychosomatic to a possible pregnancy. Elinor Cleghorn, in Unwell Women Unwell Women provides an alternative overview of women’s illnesses since the time of Hippocrates. Elinor Cleghorn’s Unwell Women: Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made World is an intriguing exploration of the history of women’s health, specifically how women are perceived as individuals and members of a larger healthcare system.

Elinor Cleghorn became an unwell woman ten years ago.

Elinor cleghorn unwell women