ABSTRACT
In this chapter I explore how women can be associated with eating disorders in general, and with treatment of these disorders in particular. My interest in these issues was awakened by a study aimed at understanding the establishing and organizing of specialized treatment of eating disorders in the 1990s in Stockholm. Trying to follow these processes I met large numbers of heterogeneous and variable allies: laboratory rats, political representatives, competing groups of the medical sciences, rating scales, civil servants, significance tests, patients’ associations, etc. I also met women – women of flesh and blood – as, for instance, most of the political representatives involved in the field of eating disorders, who are women. Women as the taken-for-granted target group of treatment. Women as one example of the objects of knowledge that are constructed in various research projects on eating disorders.
