Complementary and alternative medicine: Gender and marginality

Abstract

It is widely recognized by social scientists that over recent decades the popularity of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) has increased in the West, and that both users and practitioners are more likely to be women. Despite this, relatively little attention has been paid to explaining the relationship between gender and CAM, an omission this chapter seeks to address. In doing so, we will explore the apparent affinity between CAM, women’s health concerns and feminist agendas, and the extent to which CAM has the potential to create spaces for gender-sensitive healthcare. However, in practice this radical potential has been limited by the persistence of gendered power relations embedded within biomedicine, coupled with the position of ‘mainstream marginality’ (Cant, 2009) that CAM inhabits.