Remedies That Do Not Cure: Fraser and Gender Inequality in Brazilian Medicine

Abstract

omen now make up half of medical professionals in Brazil, yet they hold less than one fifth of the presidencies and scientific directorships of specialty societies and receive less than one third of invitations to scientific conferences. This article analyses the paradox through Nancy Fraser's three-dimensional theory of justice and argues that numerical feminization has not produced parity because medical institutions operate with affirmative remedies when transformative remedies would be required. The analysis examines how the capitalist boundary between production and reproduction runs through Brazilian medicine, hierarchically organizing care and technical intervention specialties according to gender, and discusses the consequences of medical androcentrism for the production of knowledge and for the health of all people. International evidence shows that transformative mechanisms are possible and produce measurable results. What Brazilian medical societies lack is not knowledge about the mechanisms for producing equity, but the institutional decision to implement them.