| Submitted by: | Teri Slade |
| Collaborator: | Esther Bezanson |
| Department: | Rehabilitation Medicine |
| Faculty: | Rehabilitation Medicine |
Why do women have more pain than men?
Hundreds of research studies have asked this question. They have asked whether hormones or the menstrual cycle are to blame. Some suggest it is mostly psychological.
But what if we stepped back and looked at women’s lives? Women in our society do a disproportionately large amount of childcare, household labour and family management work. My research asks what gendered parts of our day-to-day lives can affect our pain. Does picking up a toddler 500+ times per day affect your back pain? What is it like to finish a long day at work and come home to more work?
In Dorothea Tanning’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, a young girl stands off against a giant sunflower which Tanning said represents the “never-ending battle we wage with unknown forces, the forces that were there before our civilisation”. This piece asks the question of who the mother of that child is and what never-ending battle she wages.