Gendered Geographies in the Workplace of Reproductive Genetics in China

This article studies the gendered hierarchies of medical culture and organisation, analysing how they combine with and contribute to reproducing gender hierarchies of social reproduction. Using the theoretical framework of feminist geography and science and technology studies, this article demonstrates how the Chinese medical workplace is a realm of gendered power relations. This paper utilises the emerging field of reproductive genetics consultation as a case study, and draws upon participant observation conducted in a hospital in Southwest China and in-depth interviews with female physicians. It investigates the strategies employed by female physicians to confront hierarchies and inequalities, examining how they navigate masculinised medical environments and empower themselves by establishing alternative professional social networks, following the multidisciplinary requirements of obstetrics and the practical potentials of molecular technologies. In this way, they elaborate their own agency and creatively produce particular approaches of consultancy in genetic-based medical practices. Moving beyond analyses of gendered discrimination that assume a binary framework and thereby echo patriarchal conceptions, the article studies the fluid, unfixed, and provisional nature of gender by situating it within a complex spatial context enriched with specific sociocultural and technological inscriptions.