Abstract
It is acknowledged among museological scholars that museums are well fitted institutions to communicate health related issues. Nevertheless, the issues raised in this thesis concerning women’s health are not widely communicated in museums, despite it being a coherent societal matter. In this dissertation, the relationship between museums as institutions with a societal role and responsibility, and museums communicating health is examined. The focus lays on stigma, shame and lack of knowledge concerning women’s health. I reflect upon topics such as myths and misconceptions, period poverty, reproductive rights and the emergence of the women’s health movement. I use case studies in order to examine how museums can work on health, and have performed both a semi-structured interview with the director of the Vagina Museum, as well as direct observations of both the exhibition Is Your Vagina Normal? by the Vagina Museum as well as the Wandering Womb exhibition made by the Royal College of Nursing in London. My research question is: how and why have the Vagina Museum and the Wandering Womb exhibition worked to spread knowledge on women’s health? In addition to analyse the empirical material from interviews and observation, I have analysed the textual and visual material connected to the cases. I found that the cases have several similarities in how they communicate women’s health, both of them working on keywords like openness, celebration and bodily autonomy. The Wandering Womb exhibition also had a focus on communicating nurses’ roles and responsibility when it comes to decreasing stigma and shame in their communication with patients, and I believe this can lead more women to seek aid from medical personnel, especially as many women avoid taking smear tests due to embarrassment over their bodies. Furthermore, I saw several similarities between the Vagina Museum and the historical work of feminists with the women’s health movement. Both had a focus on criticising already existing institutions for not putting women’s health higher on the agenda. In conclusion, I have found that even if separate initiatives like the Vagina Museum can spur change, like with the women’s health movement, already established museum institutions should also strive to include issues concerning women’s health in their work in a greater degree, in order to remain institutions with a potential to spur societal improvements.