Emily Martin

Emily Martin's most widely cited work is 'The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction,' published in 1987. The book examines how metaphors of industrial production in medical textbooks shape the way menstruation, childbirth, and menopause are understood and treated.

In 'The Woman in the Body,' Martin argued that medical and scientific literature consistently uses metaphors of factory production and competition to describe female reproductive processes—for example, framing menstruation as a 'failure' of production. She demonstrated that these framings reflect capitalist cultural assumptions rather than neutral biological observation.

Emily Martin is associated with feminist medical anthropology and science and technology studies. Her work bridges these fields by showing how cultural assumptions about gender infiltrate supposedly objective scientific and medical knowledge about the human body.

Emily Martin served on the faculty of Princeton University in the Department of Anthropology, among other institutions during her career. Her research has been influential across anthropology, gender studies, and the history of science.