Resumen de Women in British Special Hospitals: a sociological Approach
The effective provision of services and treatments for women in special hospitals is an issue of major concern for the National Health Service in the U.K. In special hospitals, women represent 20% of the patient population and yet within such institutions the services they receive are male based and consequently insensitive to their needs. Furthermore, women in such regimes have been subject to emotional powerlessness, physical abuse and that current regimes are 'infantilizing, demeaning and anti-therapeutic' to them. Historically, the dominant explanatory framework relating to service delivery orientated an argument of women who required specialist treatment are in some way 'emotionally disturbed'. Consequently, the bio-psychological perspective is only one model which has dominated service provision. This paper examines women in Special Hospitals from a sociological analysis. It is clear that Bio-Psychological paradigms have dominated discussion in relation to women in special hospitals and there is an urgent need to develop other explanatory frameworks because dominant frameworks have failed to identify underlying social structures/processes/attitudes which combine to oppress and disadvantage women whilst simultaneously reproducing negative aspects of masculinity within prison regimes which enforce compliance with notions of 'normal femininity'.
