Women's sexuality has, throughout history, almost always been misunderstood, feared, or controlled. How did the growth of the medical field of Gynecology fit into this?

Gynaecology was largely used a method of controlling women's bodies, and participated in wider assumptions about gender. This began with classical scholars such as Aristotle, Galen and Hippocrates, who argued that females were fundamentally different in terms of structure than men, and a departure from the norm. By around the thirteenth century, this works had been translated into Latin and introduced to the learned elite. Because these scholars were so appreciated by humanists, a lot of their medical writing went unchallenged and so this filtered into medieval and Renaissance thought.

During the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there was heightened interest in anatomy and dissection, and for those interested in studying female anatomy the central focus of this was the womb, largely because of the primogeniture system of society. Paternity was fragile, and female fidelity was crucial to this, so medicine began to be used in a way to justify women's roles as mothers above all else.

Although human dissection was rare (particularly of women) the most ludicrous theories about female anatomy were dispelled in this way, but beliefs about the womb were simply adapted to fit new evidence, rather than dismiss them completely. The entire idea around analysing women was to understand how exactly women were these imperfect versions of men, and uncover the "secrets of women", a popular phrase used then to refer to their sexual reproductive organs. The De Secretis Mulierum argued that the womb cured ailments, and in turn men could expel sicknesses in the womb. Another writer at the time, Joubert, argued that the womb's temperature was important - baby girls needed to be kept warmer than baby boys as they needed longer to reach maturity. These texts were therefore being used as tools to justify femininity as weak whilst claiming 'real' medical evidence to back it up, in an attempt to gain some control back over the uncertainty of paternity. These medical texts emphasised male strength in sperm, whilst the woman's womb was weak, bolstering the importance of the father and diminishing the mother's influence.

It was entirely the womb that dominated female anatomy - showing the male almost obsession with it. This was because in their eyes, the womb was a woman's only purpose: being a mother. The other side to this was menstruation, which was seen as punishment from Eve's downfall, and a way of punishing women for their sexual desires. Monstrous birth stories in the sixteenth century were always blamed on a woman being too sexual. However, it was acknowledged to be essential and many medical texts offered remedies to provoke it rather than suppress it because it was a sign of fertility; women were just expected to feel guilty about it. It was also used as a way to justify women not be suitable for learning, because it was said to deaden their brain, and instead it was suited for motherhood because in being with a man they receive heat and this warms up their "frigid natures"!

Pregnancy obviously also dominated gynaecological thought. Bastard children were blamed solely on mothers and their sexual depravity, and it was believed that women controlled which gender a child was. The ideal case was a son who resembled their father as this meant the female aspect was completely sacrificed.

In conceiving a child a woman could not show herself to be sexual, because it was believed that a woman who had lots of sexual itnercourse produced weak foetuses, or none at all. Their looks were judged upon also and only one person (Savonarola) acknowledged the idea that a woman should enjoy the sex to conceive, advising rubbing her clitoris and caressing her nipples! Although some others believed women orgasming was necessary, it wasn't so that she could enjoy it, but more to speed the process up.

Overall, women were viewed as sexual, destructive and dangerous people who needed to be controlled, and the field of gynaecology contributed to this by having a medical justification and a biological basis to societal concerns. They were able to rationalise a lot of thought at the time, and through the development of this field, established a male authority on "women's secrets" that took over from wise women and midwives. There was an overall distrust of female control of sexuality and motherhood was the way to control this by spouting ideas that it helped their health, and they were inherently weak and depended upon men.

Gynaecology was a way of asserting power over women, and sex differences in general were used to define and shape society. Gender roles were a powerful tool for submission, and it was this representation of all that a “Woman” should be, through the trusted authority of medicine, that allowed them to separate men and women further.

References (and recommended reading if you're interested in this topic):

Maryanne Cline Horowitz, 'Aristotle and Woman' Journal of the History of Biology, vol.9, no.2 (1976) Lesley Ann Dean-Jones, Women's Bodies in Classical Greek Science (Oxford, 1996)

Ian Maclean, The Renaissance Notion of Woman: A Study in the Fortunes of Scholasticism and Medical Science in Europe (Cambridge, 1983)

Cadden, Joan, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science, and Culture (Cambridge, 1993)

Canning, Kathleen, Gender History in Practice: Historical Perspectives on Bodies, Class, and Citizenship (Ithaca, 2006)

Green, Monica, ‘Gendering the History of Women’s Healthcare’, Gender and History, vol.20, no.3 (2008), pp.487-518.

Green, Monica, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine: The Rise of Male Authority in Pre- Modern Gynaecology (Oxford, 2008)

Park, Katharine, ‘Dissecting the Female Body: From Women’s Secrets to the Secrets of Nature’, in Seeff, Adele, and Donawerth, Jane, (eds.), Attending to Early Modern Women (London, 2000), pp.29-47.

Park, Katharine, Secrets of women: gender, generation, and the origins of human dissection (New York, 2006)

I did my dissertation on this exact topic, so feel free to PM me if you have any other questions :)