Chatto & Windus signs ‘urgent’ new book on medical misogyny

Chatto & Windus has pre-empted The Stitch-Up: How Medical Misogyny Harms Women by Emma Szewczak and her husband Dr Andrzej Harris. It is described as a powerful and urgent exploration of how institutionalised misogyny in research and medicine has “betrayed half the world’s population”. 

Editorial director Poppy Hampson acquired UK & Commonwealth rights from John Ash at PEW. The book will be published in 2023. Hampson previously acquired Caroline Criado Perez’s prize-winning Invisible Women, said to have led to real change around the gender data gap and which sold over half a million copies in the UK.

In 2019, Szewczak (The Offset, Angry Robot) was being sewn up following the birth of her second child when the midwife paused and said: "Your vagina’s fallen out". Szewczak described those words as the worst thing anyone had ever said to her.

She was told that she was suffering a prolapse and spent three years being shunted from specialist to specialist, from NHS to private care to the wellness industry, with no one seemingly able to offer a solution. 

As Szewczak and her husband, a Fellow at St Catharine’s College where he supervises medical and veterinary undergraduates, became more infuriated and desperate, one question gripped their minds: why is there a complete lack of treatment options for conditions (from endometriosis to menopause and everything in between) affecting vast numbers of women across the world? 

The publisher says: “Emerging from Emma’s personal experience but moving far beyond it and relevant to women at all stages of life, The Stitch-Up is the story of repeated healthcare failures both public and private and of how institutionalised misogyny in research and medicine has betrayed half the world’s population. It’s a story that makes for devastating reading: shocking, enraging, heartfelt, this is an urgent and powerful call for change.”

The authors said: “Given the painful subject of the book, we’re thrilled to be in the safe hands of Poppy Hampson and all the team at Chatto. Together, we hope to bring more attention to the horrifying scope of medical misogyny suffered by so many women and people today.”