The Politics Of Womens Health Care

Examines the real world of women's health status and health-care delivery in different countries, and the assumptions behind the dominant medical model of solving problems without regard to social conditions. This book asks what feminist health-care ethics looks like if we start with women's experiences and concerns.

This collection of essays addresses the broadening array of issues on the agenda of the women's health movements of the 1980s and 1990s, just as a previous collection, "Women and Health: The Politics of Sex in Medicine", gathered contributions from the earlier wave of the women's health movement in the 1970s. The papers in both volumes are selected from the "International Journal of Health Services", edited by Vicente Navarro. The essays in this volume were originally published in the 1980s and early 1990s. Together, they present a framework for understanding the struggles over women's health that have occurred in this time period, and provide specific analyses of women's health in relation to race/ethnicity and class, the work of health care, the health of women workers, international reproductive health, sexuality, AIDS, and public health policy.

In a social and political environment that has become more accepting of gender equity, women's health issues have emerged in the forefront of the social policy agenda of the United States. The organized women's movement has been successful in many of its endeavors to improve opportunities for women in society in areas such as education, business, sports and the professions. As this book shows, they also have been successful in changing the definition of women's health and placing many elements of health care needs on the nation's policy agenda. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, abortion rights emerged as a central concern for many women's rights activists, some of whom took on women's other health issues. The Politics of Women's Health Care in the United States shows how the evolution of the women's health agenda has been a reaction to the empowerment of women in the years after the emergence of the contemporary women's movement in 1966 and the subsequent 'social reconstruction' of women from dependent to advantaged population.

In the face of the long domination of medical care by men, Women and Health explores from a variety of perspectives the twin issues of women in health care, and the health care of women. Specific sections address the women's health movement, birth control and childbirth, women in the health labor force, and the influence of women's employment on their health. Already acclaimed by scholars and health policy-makers alike, Women and Health is sure to become a standard sourcebook on an important and neglected subject.

In Reproductive Justice, sociologist Barbara Gurr provides the first analysis of Native American women’s reproductive healthcare and offers a sustained consideration of the movement for reproductive justice in the United States. The book examines the reproductive healthcare experiences on Pine Ridge Reservation, home of the Oglala Lakota Nation in South Dakota—where Gurr herself lived for more than a year. Gurr paints an insightful portrait of the Indian Health Service (IHS)—the federal agency tasked with providing culturally appropriate, adequate healthcare to Native Americans—shedding much-needed light on Native American women’s efforts to obtain prenatal care, access to contraception, abortion services, and access to care after sexual assault. Reproductive Justice goes beyond this local story to look more broadly at how race, gender, sex, sexuality, class, and nation inform the ways in which the government understands reproductive healthcare and organizes the delivery of this care. It reveals why the basic experience of reproductive healthcare for most Americans is so different—and better—than for Native American women in general, and women in reservation communities particularly. Finally, Gurr outlines the strengths that these communities can bring to the creation of their own reproductive justice, and considers the role of IHS in fostering these strengths as it moves forward in partnership with Native nations. Reproductive Justice offers a respectful and informed analysis of the stories Native American women have to tell about their bodies, their lives, and their communities.

Recent history has witnessed a revolution in womens health care. Beginning in the late 1960s, women in communities across the United States challenged medical and male control over womens health. Few people today realize the extent to which these grassroots efforts shifted power and responsibility from the medical establishment into womens hands as health care consumers, providers, and advocates. Into Our Own Hands traces the womens health care movement in the United States. Richly documented, this study is based on more than a decade of research, including interviews with leading activists; documentary material from feminist health clinics and advocacy organizations; a survey of womens health movement organizations in the early 1990s; and ethnographic fieldwork. Sandra Morgen focuses on the clinics born from this movement, as well as how the movements encounters with organized medicine, the state, and ascendant neoconservative and neoliberal political forces of the 1970s to the1980s shaped the confrontations and accomplishments in womens health care. The book also explores the impact of political struggles over race and class within the movement organizations.

Russia's maternal health crisis and postsocialist transition examined through ethnographic observation in clinics and hospitals.

Numerous issues confront women's healthcare today, among them the medicalization of women's bodies, cosmetic genital surgery, violence against women, HIV, perinatal mental health disorders. This volume uniquely explores such difficult topics and others at the intersection of clinical practice, policy, and bioethics in women's health care through a feminist ethics lens. With in-depth discussions of issues in women's reproductive health, it also broadens scholarship by responding to a wider array of ethical challenges that many women experience in accessing health care. Contributions touch on many themes previously tackled by feminist ethics, but in new, contemporary ways. Some chapters expand into new fields in the bioethics literature, such as the ethical issues related to the care of Indigenous women, uninsured refugees and immigrants, women engaged in sex work, and those with HIV at different life stages and perinatal mental health disorders. Authors seek to connect theory and practice with users of the health system by including women's voices in their research. Bringing to bear their experience in active clinical practice in medicine, nursing, and ethics, the authors contemplate new conceptual approaches to important issues in women's healthcare, and make ethical practice recommendations for those grappling with these issues. Topical and up-to-date, this book provides a valuable resource for physicians, nurses, clinical ethicists, and researchers working in some of the most critical areas of women's health and applied ethics today.