Politics Of Women'S Health [Hardcover]

This is an excellent, insightful book written by American and Canadian women whose fields are medicine, law, philosophy, social science, genetics, and history and who write from a feminist perspective. Their discussions, not limited geographically to North America, include African and Japanese data; their themes are those of autonomy and agency and the prevalent trend in modern healthcare of concentrating on the patient while ignoring his or her economic and social milieu. Chapters include analyses of women in the healthcare system and their autonomy or lack thereof, women and aging, wife abuse, and human research guidelines. The text is well written and engaging. Recommended for all university libraries and large public libraries with research collections.?Sharon Firestone, Arizona State Univ. Lib., Tempe
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

For four years this interdisciplinary group of scholars and practitioners, including physicians, lawyers, philosophers, and social scientists, collaborated closely on the development of these essays. The result is an examination of both 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. The writing is also informed by some of the authors' own experiences with women's health issues: birth, menopause, major surgery, and providing care for mothers and grandmothers.Rather than focusing on types of medical interventions, "The Politics of Women's Health" asks what feminist health-care ethics looks like if we start with women's experiences and concerns. It begins to unravel two key concepts of women's empowerment- agency and autonomy-that apply to all areas of concern to women. Susan Sherwin is Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies, Dalhousie University.

The practical issues of women's empowerment in the health-care system and the deep assumptions and values that underlie that system

Susan Sherwin is Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies, Dalhousie University.