What are child-bearing hips? How has science been used to uphold the patriarchy?

Photo Courtesy: Engraving by G. Bartoli, WikiMedia Commons

“Child-Bearing hips" is an over-simplified term to describe a gynecoid pelvis shape (i.e. wider hips) that make it easier to give birth. Its conversational use since the 1910s has made it loaded with patriarchal implications.

Urban Dictionary defines child-bearing hips as: “The shape of the hips and pelvic region of certain females which trigger a man's innate sense of carnal attraction to women who display the ability to bear children”.  A term initially coined as a scientific substitute is now being used to shape beauty standards, body trends and influence male attraction; this, undoubtedly, fuels the fetishization of certain body types. 

Since the 1930s, the classification system that puts hip shapes into one of four categories - gynecoid pelvis (child-bearing hips), android, anthropoid and platypelloid - has slowly crawled its way into oblivion as scientists find it harder and harder to now categorise distinct pelvic shapes.  Either way, wide hips are only part of deciding whether a vaginal birth is possible. Plenty of people with “child-bearing hips” are unable to deliver a baby. Using this and other similar terms like “fertile” and “natural beauty”  to describe women’s bodies, reduces their identity to their reproductive abilities. 

The patriarchy is a historical social construct which saw political organisations distributing unequal power to men and women, putting women below men in a social hierarchy. While it is supposedly an outdated worldview, the patriarchal thought still persists.

Family structures that differentiate between the expectations of women as caregivers and men as providers at home, are the most obvious displays of patriarchy. While women are able to work now, patriarchal problems like being paid and promoted less, divide the working experience of women from men. Gender-based violence - like harassment, rape and forced abortion - is rooted in patriarchal ideologies. 

Science may be deemed the objective truth but it is a social activity that is dependent on knowledge as well as the social conditions in which knowledge is produced. It is not untouched by biases. For years, science has only thought about women in terms of their reproductive differences and this is a reflection of society. Evolutionary science is sexist. It differentiates men and women and creates a disparity between the two genders, hence, upholding the patriarchy.

In 1849, men were “biologically” deemed superior to women on the basis of average brain size. This theory was deeply flawed and tainted by the scientist George Samuel Morton’s personal beliefs. He skewed the results and discounted populations with lower average brain sizes - Indian, African-American and Native American men, making it easier to fit the narrative that all men had bigger brain sizes than women. In this way the patriarchy is not just harmful to women but also men who don’t meet a certain standard of superiority. 

More recently a 1992 Scientific American article -”Sex differences in the brain” was re-published in 2002. The article claimed that women cannot equally succeed in professions involving math and spatial reasoning, making men more suitable to work in disciplines like physics and engineering. For years medical sciences have attributed hysteria (extreme emotional excess that is difficult to control) as a woman’s problem, all while also comparing women to caucasian teenagers who are not susceptible to pain. 

The list goes on and on and through many years of confusing and biased research, science has inevitably been influenced by the patriarchy and in turn upheld it in a vicious cycle. 

The root of the problem is, women were not given a seat at the table. Science is a wonderful tool in finding out how the world works but it is crucial to recognise how it can fail us and make the best effort to reverse the damage that has been done. Philosophers, sociologists and historians are constantly debunking the myth that science is and always has been perfect. It is time for scientists to take the same accountability and stop carelessly using terms like “child-bearing hips” that reinforce deeper societal structures like the patriarchy.