The Making And Marking Of Male OB/GYNs In The Chinese Mass Media

Background:The legitimacy of the medical profession is established based on the knowledge and training of medical practices. Obstetricians and gynecologists (OB/GYNs) are no exception. In theory, there should be very little gender difference in professional practices. However, in reality, the implications of being a male and a female doctor can vary greatly in different social and cultural contexts. For example, in contemporary China, the male OB/GYNs are often associated with insulting words such as " pervert;" and sometimes the verbal assaults grow into physical ones. Meanwhile, the boundaries of gender show visible differences in the contexts of medical practices and everyday life. Therefore, we argue that gender boundaries are constantly shifting and contesting, which needs to be analyzed and defined within concrete social cultural contexts. Research questions:The paper focuses on how mass media identify and construct the identities of male OB/GYNs; how news reports on male OB/GYNs demonstrate the interaction between professional discourse and gender discourse; and how shifting gender boundaries affect the construction of the identities of male OB/GYNs.Methodology:We employed the method of content analysis. The newspaper texts used in this research are based on all newspapers published in mainland China from the WiseNews database, with a time span from January 1st,1999 to December 31 st,2013. Chinese terms “男女产科医生” and “妇产科男医生”,i.e. male OB/GYNs, were used as keywords to make content retrieval. Coding for those news stories is divided into two parts. The first part of coding mainly deals with the basic information of news itself, so the unit of analysis is the news context; the second part of coding focuses on the information of male OB/GYNs, female patients and male relatives, and the unit of analysis is individual newsmaker.Conclusion:The image of male OB/GYNs envisioned in news reports of mainland China are undergoing a polarization. Male OB/GYNs of different ages have varied images. The young male OB/GYNs are always shown as conflicts, and they always suffer medical examination resistance, verbal abuse, and even physically abuse from patients and relatives. Also, patients and their relatives hold different objective views on male OB/GYNs, and compared to female patients, male relatives are more conservative. "The awkwardness of male doctors in the department of gynaecology and obstetrics" and "Strong male doctors are in need" were two hot topic covered by the press. Now the media is paying more attention to the details of the professional practice, for example, the personality traits shown in the job. A male OB/GYN’s sexual identity is not only decided by his gender, but also be affected by his medical training and professional ethics. Also should be noted is the impact on their action plan and identity regeneration after being distrusted by their patients.