Archives
Guest Editorial
Women's Health
An issue of gender
Toni Schofield
Behavioural and Community Health Sciences, University of Sydney, NSW
Abstract
Since the early 1970's when the women's health movement first expressed concerns about the medical management of women's bodies, the issue of 'gender and health' has become an enduring topic of sociological research interest. The two papers in this section explore some of the changes that have ensued since then in sociological approaches to, and understandings of, this subject. The first paper What does 'gender and health' mean?, suggests that one of the main arenas in which the subject has been raised has been public health policy, both in Australia and internationally. It proposes that there have been marked shifts in what 'gender and health' means in public policy discourse and that these have been related to the emergence of social movements, especially those associated with women's and men's health. As the paper argues, there is no consensus. Conflict and contestation prevail over what 'gender and health' means within public policy. The paper critically analyses the principal discursive constructions of the term, identifying their conceptual and empirical limitations.
Penny Warner-Smith's and Gita Mishra's paper, 'Happy hours':women's wellbeing and their satisfaction with hours of paid work', is based on data generated by the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health.. This study is informed by a commitment to examining the relationship between women's heath and key aspects of their social circumstances. Accordingly, the paper published here reports on and analyses findings associated with the relationship between women's health and their hours of employment - in particular, women's reported levels of satisfaction with their hours of employment. Such a focus arises from one of the fundamental tenets of the women's health movement: gendered societies constrain women in voicing their understandings of their health. This is reflected in the health research that such societies produce.
Research based on what women say about their health and their everyday lives thus signals a marked departure from the dominant models of health research. These are shaped mainly by epidemiology and clinical medicine. In operationalising a 'women's health' approach to researching women's health, Warner-Smith's and Mishra's paper discloses an understanding of 'gender and health' that is hotly contested within public health policy discussion.
References
Ashton J and Seymour H (1988) The new public health, Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
Baum F (1998) The new public health: an Australian perspective, Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
Boston Women's Health Collective (1971) Our bodies, ourselves, NY: Simon and Schuster.
Bourdieu P (1998) Practical reason: on the theory of action, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Broom D (1998) Gender and health, in Germov J (ed) Second opinion: an introduction to health sociology, Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
Butler J (1995) Contingent foundations, in Linda Nicholson (ed) Feminist contentions: a philosophical exchange, New York and London: Routledge.
Cass B and Schofield T (forthcoming) The significance of gender in health policy, Australian Health Policy Institute, University of Sydney.
Connell R (2002) Gender, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Connell R, Schofield T, Walker L, Wood J and Butland D (1999) Men's health: a research agenda and background report, Canberra: Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care.
Davis A and George J (1993) States of health: health and illness in Australia 2nd ed, Melbourne: Longman.
Doyal L (2000) Gender equity in health: debates and dilemmas, Social Science and Medicine 51(6): 931-939.
Eckert P and McConnell-Ginet S (1992) Communities of practice: where language, gender and power all live, in K Hall, M Bucholtz and B Moonwomon (eds) Locating Power: Proceedings of the 2nd Berkeley Women and Language Conference, Berkeley CA: Berkeley Women and Langauge Group, University of California- Berkeley: 89-99.
Gillespie J (1991) The price of health: Australian governments and medical politics 1910-1960, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Honneth A (1995) The struggle for recognition: the moral grammar of social conflicts, Cambridge: Polity Press.
James C (1995) Models of practice - Queensland women's health, in J Davis, S Andrews, DH Broom, G Gray and M Renwick (eds) Changing society for women's health: Proceedings of the 3rd National Women's Health Conference, Canberra: AGPS: 51-54.
Klein R (1995) Our bodies ourselves revisited, in J Davis, S Andrews, DH Broom, G Gray and M Renwick (eds) Changing society for women's health: Proceedings of the 3rd National Women's Health Conference, Canberra: AGPS: 145-149.
Lewis M and Leeder S (2001) Where to from here? The need to construct a comprehensive national health policy, Australian Health Policy Institute Commissioned Paper Series 2001/01, Sydney: University of Sydney, Australian Health Policy Institute.
Marceau L and McKinlay J (2002) Beyond doctor and patient: macro-level influences affecting clinical decision making, in 34th Annual Conference Programme, BSA Medical Sociology Group, UK: University of York: 87.
Martin E (1987) The woman in the body, Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
Meares R (2000) Intimacy and alienation: memory, trauma and personal being, London: Routledge.
Miles A (1991) Women, health and medicine, Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
Milewa T, Valentine J and Calnan M (1999) Community participation and citizenship in British health care planning: narratives of power and involvement in the changing welfare state, Sociology of Health and Illness 21(4): 445-465.
NSW Health Department (1999a) Moving forward in men's health, Sydney: NSW Health Department.
NSW Health Department (1999b) Resource distribution formula: technical paper, Sydney: NSW Health Department, Structural and Funding Policy Branch.
NSW Health Department (2000) Strategic framework to advance the health of women, Sydney: NSW Health Department.
Pringle R (1998) Sex and medicine: gender, power and authority in the medical profession, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pusey M (1991) Economic rationalism in Canberra: a nation building state changes its mind, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Reiger K (2001) Our bodies, our babies: the forgotten women's movement, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
Roe J (1983) The end is where we start from: women and welfare since 1901, in C Baldock and B Cass (eds) Women, social welfare and the state, Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Russell C and Schofield T (1986) Where it hurts: an introduction to sociology for health workers, Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Salmon JW (1985) Profit and health care trends in corporatization and proprietization, International Journal of Health Services 3: 395-418.
Schofield T (1995) A politics of childbirth: public policy and childbirth in NSW 1950-1990, PhD thesis, University of Sydney.
Schofield T (1998) Health, in B Caine, M Gatens, E Grahame, J Larbalestier, S Watson and E Webby (eds) Australian feminism: a companion, Melbourne: Oxford University Press: 123-132.
Schofield T, Connell R, Walker L, Wood J and Butland D (2000) Understanding men's health and illness: a genderrelations approach to policy, research, and practice, Journal of American College Health 48(6): 247-256.
Shim J (2002) Understanding the routinised inclusion of race, socioeconomic status and sex in epidemiology: the utility of concepts from technoscience studies, Sociology of Health and Illness 24(2): 129-150.
Stevens J (1995) Healing Women: a history of Leichhardt Women's Community Health Centre, Sydney: First Ten Years History Project.
Stewart R (1999) Public policy: strategy and accountability, Melbourne: Macmillan.
Thame C (1974) Health and the state: the development of collective responsibility for health care in Australia, PhD thesis, Australian National University.
WHO, Women's Health and Development (1998) Gender and health: technical paper (WHO/FRH/WHD/98.16), Geneva: WHO.
Wodak R (1997) Introduction: some important issues in the research of gender and discourse, in R Wodak (ed) Gender and Discourse, London: Sage: 1-20.
Young IM (1997) Intersecting voices: dilemmas of gender, political philosophy and policy, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
eContent Home