What Makes Women Sick : Gender and the Political Economy of Health

Lesley Doyal draws on a wide range of disciplines to highlight the limitations of medical models in understanding global patterns of health and disease in women. Examining in detail the impact of sexuality, fertility control, reproduction, domestic labour and waged work on women's well-being, she shows how gender divisions in economic and social life affect their experiences of illness, disability and mortality. A concluding chapter illustrates the multiplicity of ways in which women around the world are challenging the threats to their health. What makes women sick? To an Ecuadorean woman, it's nervios from constant worry about her children's illnesses. To a woman working in a New Mexico electronics factory, it's the solvents that leave her with a form of dementia. To a Ugandan woman, it's HIV from her husband's sleeping with the widow of an AIDS patient. To a Bangladeshi woman, it's a fatal infection following an IUD insertion. What they all share is a recognition that their sickness is somehow caused by situations they face every day at home and at work. In this clearly written and compelling book, Lesley Doyal investigates the effects of social, economic, and cultural conditions on women's health. The "fault line" of gender that continues to divide all societies has, Doyal demonstrates, profound and pervasive consequences for the health of women throughout the world. Her broad synthesis highlights variations between men and women in patterns of health and illness, and it identifies inequalities in medical care that separate groups of women from each other. Doyal's wide-ranging arguments, her wealth of data, her use of women's voices from many cultures - and her examples of women mobilizing to find their own solutions - makes this book required reading for everyone concerned with women's health. Front Matter....Pages i-xii In Sickness and in Health....Pages 1-26 Hazards of Hearth and Home....Pages 27-58 Safe Sex?....Pages 59-92 Regulating Reproduction....Pages 93-124 A Labour of Love....Pages 125-151 Waged Work and Well-Being....Pages 152-175 Abusing Women....Pages 176-196 Women’s Movements for Health....Pages 197-233 Back Matter....Pages 234-280 There is a widespread belief that doctors are the 'real' experts on women's health and that biomedicine holds the key to improving it.