Women S Health In Canada

In recent years, healthcare professionals have recognized the distinctly different healthcare needs and concerns of men and women. Women's health, in particular, has come into its own in the last two decades. In Canada, however, there has been little available in the way of a general text on women's health. This volume works toward filling that gap by providing a resource for teaching and understanding women's health in this country. To lay out the methodological and theoretical foundations for their study, editors Olena Hankivisky, Marina Morrow, and Colleen Varcoe bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars and practitioners from economics, anthropology, sociology, nursing, political studies, women's studies, and psychology. Contributors draw on the rich history of the Canadian women's health movement, providing analysis of that history and of the emergent theory, policy, and practice. Aimed at undergraduate and graduate students as well as practitioners, the collection adopts an intersectional approach, looking closely at social factors such as gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, and gender identity, and analysing how they relate both to each other and to women's health. Connections between the social, economic, and cultural contexts of women's lives and their physical, spiritual, and mental well-being are a primary focus. Providing a much needed resource for teachers, students, and practitioners of women's health in Canada, this comprehensive volume makes an important contribution to the literature.

Thinking Women and Health Care Reform in Canada explores why health care is a woman's issue and seeks to address gender equity in health services. Written by members of Women and Health Care Reform (WHCR), this collection establishes the importance of including gender in discussions and decisions surrounding health sector reform. In twelve concise chapters, Thinking Women and Health Care Reform in Canada addresses a wide range of issues, including obesity, maternity care, mental health of health care workers, and private health insurance. This thought-provoking collection is an essential read for students and researchers in the fields of women's studies, health sciences, sociology, and nursing, as well as for anyone who is looking for a new picture of health care in Canada.

This collection considers how health, and women's health are shaped through intersecting systems of power based on colonialism, sexism, racism, heterosexism, and ableism.

Authors provide a much-needed analysis of the dynamic decades after 1945, when both Canada and the United States began using federal funds to expand health-care access, and biomedical research and authority reached new heights. Focusing on a wide range of issues - including childbirth, abortion and sterilization, palliative care, pharmaceutical regulation, immigration, and Native health care - these essays illuminate the ironic promise of biomedicine, postwar transformations in reproduction, the varied work and belief-systems of female health-care providers, and national differences in women's health activism. Contributors include Aline Charles (Laval University), Barbara Clow (independent scholar), Laura E. Ettinger (Clarkson University), Georgina Feldberg (York University), Karen Flynn (York University), Vanessa Northington Gamble (Association of American Medical Colleges), Elena R. Gutiérrez (University of Illinois, Chicago), Molly Ladd-Taylor (York University), Alison Li (independent scholar), Maureen McCall (physician, Nepal), Michelle L. McClellan (University of Georgia), Kathryn McPherson (York University), Dawn Dorothy Nickel (University of Alberta), Heather Munro Prescott (Central Connecticut State University), Leslie J. Reagan (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Susan M. Reverby (Wellesley College), Susan L. Smith (University of Alberta), Ann Starr (visual artist and writer), and Judith Bender Zelmanovits (York University).

Women’s Health in Canada considers the challenges relating to the conceptualization of women’s health. While emphasizing the importance of taking an intersectional approach to women’s healthcare, this book also focuses on the social and structural determinants at play. This revised and updated second edition brings together a collection of new chapters and contributors who collectively shed light on the problems and risks involved in perceiving women’s healthcare using a strictly "gender"- or "sex"-based lens. Contributors foreground an understanding of power as it is mediated through a range of social relations based on gender, race, culture, ethnicity, sexuality, ability, class, and geography and the ways in which privilege and oppression intersect to shape health and system responses to health. This new edition includes updates on what is currently known about women’s health nationally and internationally and situates the chapters in the current Canadian health care and policy context. Scholarship is foregrounded in new developments in gender and intersectional health research and policy. Collectively, this volume explores the important histories and contemporary realities in women’s health experiences.