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The Irish Cervical Screening Scandal
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Description
This book aims to position the Irish State's response to the 'CervicalCheck debacle' of 2018 in the context of previous accounts of women's struggles for autonomy, redress and justice across the history of the modern Irish State.
The 'CervicalCheck debacle' refers to revelations that the State had failed to disclose to women that they had received false-negative test results. These errors, which were communicated to the women's doctors, but not to the women themselves, resulted in the failure to detect the presence of pre-cancerous cells in screening for these women, who all later developed invasive cervical cancer. The State investigations that ensued revealed that the screening programme was characterised by myriad governance and oversight failures.
Considering the State's response to the CervicalCheck scandal alongside other accounts of institutionalised gendered injury in Ireland, this book shows patterns of moral and epistemic hierarchisation throughout the extraordinary history of gendered institutional harm that characterises Irish history in the 20th and 21st centuries.
This approach illuminates some of the naturalised contradictions in the CervicalCheck debacle, highlighting the injustices that women experienced throughout, and how these injustices were discursively suppressed and minimised by the State. It also provides greater understanding of the discursive mechanisms that insulate the State from true accountability, despite the evident persistence of a gender bias through Irish political and medical institutions.
Accessibility Information
Additional accessibility information
- PDF/UA-2, 1.4
- accessibility@bloomsbury.com
Hazards
The publication contains no hazards
Support for non-visual reading
Has alternative text descriptions for images
Navigation
- Page list to go to pages from the print source version
- Elements such as headings, tables, etc for structured navigation
- All or substantially all textual matter is arranged in a single logical reading order
Table of Contents
Part 1 - The Cervical Screening Scandal in Theoretical and Historical Context
1. Discourse, Epistemic Inequality and Gender
2. Women's Bodies in Modern Irish History
3. Discourse and Epistemic Strategies in Redress
Part 2 - The 2018 Cervical Screening Scandal and the State's Response
4. The Cervicle Screening Scandal
5. Epistemic Hierarchies in the Cervical Screening Scandal
6. Moral Hierarchies and Discursive Control
7. Hierarchization of Injuries
8. Reflections on the Significance of the Cervical Screening Scandal Discourse
9. Conclusion
Bibliography
Product details
| Published | 13 May 2027 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (PDF) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 224 |
| ISBN | 9781350619265 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
About the contributors
Reviews
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This book does the important job of connecting the CervicalCheck scandal to the Irish state's wider practices of inquiry and redress. Dunne carefully unpacks the strategies of objectification, shame and discursive control the state deploys when scandals break and justice-seeking movements demand action.
Máiréad Enright, Loughborough University, UK
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Dunne intersects considerations of the hierarchies of power with much-needed questions on state accountability. The result is a timely, brave and hard-hitting analysis of systematic harm and gender bias.
Diane Urquhart, Queen's University Belfast, UK
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This book disrupts our understanding of past, present, and future to reveal the systematicity of the Irish State's gendered institutional bias, harm, and violence across centuries. Dunne analyzes the CervicalCheck scandal within the context of the suppression of Irish women's bodily autonomy, agency, and ultimately their humanity. By uncovering the mechanisms of reproductive oppression and elevating women's embodied knowledge and experience, this book offers hope for a truly radical transformative reckoning for Ireland.
Beth Sundstrom, College of Charleston, USA and Co-author of Catching Fire: Women's Health Activism in Ireland and the Global Movement for Reproductive Justice

























