So this title is misleading.

I absolutely expected this to be a mashup of Doing Harm and Invisible Women, two great books about medical misogyny and data gaps that I highly recommend to interested readers.

This is however less a book about current medical misogyny and more of a historical perspective. We're given a sweeping perspective from ancient Greece to the witch trials, from hysteria to lobotomies, from the yellow wallpaper to roe v wade, from the pill to chronic fatigue syndrome. As a sociopolitical and historical perspective, it's comprehensive and fascinating.

The book suffers a little bit when it comes to balancing certain things. There's definitely topics we want to read more about, while others the reader will likely grow sick of before the section is over. The author also gave herself the difficult challenge of writing as intersectionally as possible while also not over-qualifying and minimizing some of the experiences she describes, and this led to some artificial language choices and weird inconsistencies. There were sentences that pulled me out of the book as they felt more virtue-signaling based rather than substance based. In other words, I suspected certain turns of phrase were added in the editing process as afterthoughts.

Recommended if you're interested in the history of how medicine has viewed "the woman", especially with a focus on the early to mid 20th century. If you're looking for something more modern, see my recs above.

3.5 stars rounded up.