In this paper, the author wants to read generalised epidemics as a woman might and to rework the discourse on such epidemics to articulate and include a specifically feminine voice.

In using the phrase “reading as a woman”, my aim is not to develop a singular different voice, a universalised, essentialised feminine persona. Rather, it is to explore, in the words of Lorraine Code (1995:155), “whose voices have been audible, and whose muffled, in the articulations of prevailing theories; of showing whose experiences count, and how epistemic authority is established and withheld.