The Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies
The Center for Research in Feminist, Queer, and Transgender Studies

I graduated in 2015 with a double major in GSWS and Modern Middle Eastern Studies. I am now a first year medical student at Drexel. It was actually through GSWS that I discovered my interest in becoming a healthcare provider! When I was a freshman, I took a Gender and Health class, where we started by studying the history of childbirth. It was really eye opening for me to see how political healthcare and medicine is and always has been! We talked about how control over childbirth was taken away from the people giving birth and their friend and family member support people, and shifted to male obstetricians in hospital settings. The lens of gender studies was so important to analyze this shift and the medicalization of childbirth that persists to this day! Because of this class, I considered what it would be like to be a healthcare provider myself. To explore more, I trained as a volunteer birth doula, then also as an abortion hand-holder during my sophomore year, and worked as a research coordinator in a family planning clinic when I was a senior. I continued to take GSWS classes that deepened my understanding of racism, sexism, transphobia, and capitalism. I was also involved in student Palestine solidarity organizing, which only served to deepen my understanding of how systems of oppression work together. I was able to integrate all of these concepts into my understanding of medicine and my potential role in it as a provider. For my senior thesis, I focused on narrative medicine and chronic disease. After I graduated from Penn with a GSWS major, I started a premed postbac program at Bryn Mawr College, where I took all of the premed classes in a year, and then applied to medical school. As a medical student at Drexel, I am grateful every day for the training I received as a GSWS major. I am equipped to analyze group dynamics in terms of who is taking up space and answering questions, and question what we are taught about race and racism (thanks to Dr. Dorothy Robert's amazing class "Race, Science, and Society" that I took as a senior at Penn), and work with my classmates to change the way medicine is taught and ultimately practiced. I hope to practice as a family medicine doctor, and be able to provide abortion care as part of my practice.