The Deficit Myth: How Morality, Media, and Medicine Have Framed Women as “Lacking”

iveycounselingweb
Oct 12
5 min read

A serene moment of bliss: a confident woman enjoys the scent of a vibrant bouquet against a warm orange backdrop.

Earlier this year, I had a client return for some maintenance sessions after taking a pause from therapy. In her email explaining the reason for her break, she wrote courageously about her exhaustion from the constant cycle of self-improvement, from always trying to be better, or even just enough.

She described how becoming a new mother shifted something profound in her. She had discovered a newfound gratitude and a deep sense of love, and realized that simply being a mom made her enough. Her baby didn’t need to do anything to earn worthiness; he just was. And for the first time, she could see herself the same way.

I celebrated this revelation with her. But I also couldn’t stop thinking about her question between the lines; how had therapy itself contributed to the belief that she wasn’t enough? How had the very practice I so deeply believe in, a profession meant to affirm worth, somehow reinforced the opposite?

In our following sessions, we set the shared intention that therapy would not be a space to fix her, but to strengthen what was already whole: her intuition, gifts, and inherent value as a woman, mother, partner, and friend.

(I received permission from this client to share her story)

How History Taught Women to Doubt Their Own Value

There’s a quiet story that lives beneath women’s lives; a story that says something about them is lacking.

That their bodies are flawed. Their desire is dangerous. Their intuition is irrational.

This story didn’t begin in the modern era. It’s woven through centuries of philosophy, theology, and medicine, a worldview often called the deficit model.

At its core, it’s the idea that women are incomplete versions of men: weaker, less rational, less capable, and even less human in their full expression.

The Ancient Roots of the Deficit Model

In ancient Greek philosophy, thinkers like Aristotle and Galen described women as biologically inferior, a “mutilated male,” in Aristotle’s words. He claimed women’s reproductive systems were internal because their bodies were too weak to produce semen, the supposed “life force.” Galen later echoed this idea, suggesting that women were essentially men “turned inside out.”

This wasn’t just bad science, it was a worldview that defined womanhood as deficiency. Men were seen as the standard, and women, a deviation. The ripple effects of that framing have echoed for millennia.

From phrenology to the BMI to the pathologizing of poverty, those in power have long defined what race, class, and gender represent the “ideal” and anyone who deviates from that ideal is seen as deficient.

The Deficit Model and Women’s Sexuality

For centuries, perhaps forever, women’s sexuality has been filtered through a deficit lens, as though something essential is missing, broken, or inherently flawed.

Across moral teachings, media messages, and even medical narratives, women have been cast as the ones who need fixing, balancing, or approval before they can experience pleasure.

This framing doesn’t just misrepresent women’s bodies, it disconnects them from their own birthright to pleasure, intimacy, and wholeness.

The Moral Deficit: Sin, Virtue, and the Control of Desire

When religious institutions gained influence, moral frameworks absorbed and amplified these ancient ideas. The early Christian church often portrayed women as the gateways to sin: Eve as the origin of downfall, Mary as the unreachable ideal of purity. The body became a battleground: desire was something to restrain, mistrust, or suppress. Pleasure was tolerated only within narrow confines… for procreation, not for joy. Women’s pleasure, in particular, was suspect. It was either evidence of temptation or proof of immorality. Even when religion claimed to “protect” women’s virtue, it simultaneously stripped them of bodily agency. The message endured: to be a good woman meant to resist your own desire, and to never tempt a man (who, it was implied, couldn’t help himself).

When women internalize this message, what often follows is disconnection:

Desire shuts down, and women think something is “wrong” with them.
They feel guilty for wanting intimacy, or ashamed for not wanting it enough.
They learn to apologize for their pleasure, or stop seeking it altogether.

The Medicalization of Deficiency

The deficit model is also deeply embedded in the history of medicine and mental health. In the 18th and 19th centuries, physicians began to view women’s reproductive systems as the root of nearly every physical or emotional symptom. “Hysteria”, from the Greek hystera, meaning uterus, became a catch-all diagnosis for anxiety, depression, restlessness, and sexual dissatisfaction. The underlying message was clear: when women expressed emotion, it was because of their biology, not their environment or circumstances. Medical treatments ranged from bed rest to surgical removal of the clitoris, to the “pelvic massages” that later evolved into the invention of the vibrator, not as a tool of pleasure, but as a “cure” for women’s irritability and desire. These interventions weren’t about healing; they were about suppression.

Even in modern times, medical literature centers male sexuality; arousal, performance, and function, while women’s sexual health is often studied primarily in terms of fertility or dysfunction. Women have not been understood as pleasure-bearing beings, but as reproductive bodies.

To oversimplify: men are prescribed Viagra; women are told, “it’s just menopause.”

The Media Mirror: Performing Desire Instead of Feeling It

In our modern era, media continues the deficit story in subtler, but powerful ways.

Now the message isn’t that women shouldn’t enjoy sex, it’s that they’re failing at it if they don’t look or act a certain way. Women’s sexual worth becomes tied to external validation: beauty, youth, desirability. Pleasure becomes performance. The internal question shifts from “What feels good to me?” to “How do I look while doing this?” This version of the deficit model doesn’t overtly call women defective, but it keeps them endlessly distracted, comparing, and trying to fix what was never broken.

What Now: Reclaiming Wholeness and Pleasure

It’s worth pausing to recognize that strong external cultural forces are at play any time a woman feels unworthy. As therapists, healers, and helpers, we have to be vigilant. Our work must affirm, not fix; reflect, not judge. We must create spaces where women can remember what has always been true: You are worthy, valued, whole, and important, not because of what you do, but because of who you are. When it comes to sexuality, there’s one profound biological truth I return to again and again:

There exists a body part that only women have, one that serves no reproductive function whatsoever. Its sole purpose is pleasure.

Whether you see that as God’s divine design or evolutionary brilliance, it is evidence that women’s bodies were made for delight, tenderness, time, and connection. Why would something exist purely for pleasure if pleasure weren’t meant to matter? If you’re unsure what body part I’m talking about, I’ll gently recommend the book Becoming Cliterate by Dr. Laurie Mintz.