Women's Health: Complexities and Differences (Women & Health S.) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0814207049 ISBN 13: 9780814207048

Publisher: Ohio State University Press, 1997

Synopsis

Challenging purely biomedical definitions of women's health, Women's Health: Complexities and Differences draws attention to social, cultural, and behavioral elements crucial to a broader understanding of the issues. The contributors to this volume raise important questions about the directions currently being taken to improve women's health in the United States: Is women's health merely the absence of disease? What have been the consequences of promoting narrow biomedical models of health? What do the pervasive patterns and puzzles in the distribution of disease, illness, and death among different groups of women tell us about the sources of ill health? How well do national agendas address all women's health care priorities? What are the implications for social action? Particular attention is paid in this collection of essays to how race, class, gender, and culture shape and in turn are shaped by treatment options and health care for certain subpopulations among Native American, Latina, Asian American, and African American women. Discussions of reproductive health, mental health, violence, and the treatment of stigmatized women raise perplexing issues about choice, chance, and social change.

About this title

Synopsis

In a challenge to purely biomedical definitions of women's health, this text draws attention to social, cultural, and behavioural elements. The concept of women's health has undergone a transformation over the past two decades. From an assumption of basic commonalities among women (based on the shared characteristics of the female anatomy and of diseases prevalent amongst women), the focus has shifted to the differences among women that affect their health and medical treatment. The contributors to this volume raise questions about the directions currently being taken to improve women's health in the United States: is health merely the absence of disease? What have been the consequences of promoting narrow biological medical models of health? What do the pervasive patterns and puzzles in the distribution of disease, illness, and death among different groups of women tell us about the sources of ill health? How well do national agendas address "all" women's health care priorities? What are the implications for social action? In questioning dualistic and overgeneralized views of women's health, it is argued that womens health must be considered not only in terms of women's bodies, but in terms of entire communities. By focusing on the complexities and differences among women of diverse groups, these essays address the social and contextual issues within which the clinical issues are embedded. Subsequently, new courses are promoted for women's health research and policy in the century to come.

Edition details

• Publisher: Ohio State University Press
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0814207049
• ISBN 13: 9780814207048
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 624
• Editor: Ruzek Sheryl B., Olesen Virginia L., Clarke Adele