The suffering of female ex-patients : from the narratives of women who have recovered from hansen's disease

Abstract

This report is based on interviews with six women who have been able to get back into society after the national leprosy -segregation (and discrimination) policy was ended. I focus on the particular suffering of those women who have left the segregated institutions. I found that most of these women think that they should not have babies even after being back in society, because they are still influenced by prior wrong medical policy. Such women's temptations to envy women who have given birth even after leaving the institutions of segregation disturb the former group. Beyond this, the women (whose relationships with their families have been disrupted) report that they cannot recover warm relations even with their own mothers. They are also bothered by problematic relationships with other persons around them. Furthermore, such women feel conflicts since they, on the one hand, had had a sort of financially-secure and stable life-style at national expense and, on the other hand, have suffered hardships such as forced abortions and even infanticides at the hands of the discriminating authorities. Also, now still both in and out of the segregated institutions, the women are caught up in a feud of something like mutual surveillance of each other. Those who have been bullied may also bully others. In contrast, many of the exited women report that they have equal relationships with their husbands with respect to gender difference and responsibilities, for their husbands are comrades who have together experienced the same segregation. Similar situations are reported to apply to the males, and this is how particularly women's sufferings have been masked and not revealed.