Women and Health

Women's lives are different because their bodies are different. Regular menstrual cycles, pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding are all unique to women. The fact that the body is so prominently involved in much of women's lives has been used to denigrate women, as if these bodily functions limit the development of their brains and souls.

Lynn Japinga
Feminism and Christianity: An Essential Guide

When you hear the phrases “Women's Health Issues” or “Women's Health Care” what do they trigger for you? For some, particular physical conditions come to mind (breast cancer, menopause, pregnancy and childbirth), for others political and economical questions are raised (where is the money being spent, what health services exist and how are they delivered?), still, for others the phrase can trigger etymological reactions (“Is ‘women's health’ an issue? Is it up for debate? How is it different from men's health? Why is it that aging itself is 'treated' in women with unknown long term positive value, while there is not such comparable treatment in men?”). This page points to resources for exploring the terms Women and Health, and how the two relate.

On the web, searching "women's health" results in nearly 225,000 pages, so it's best to combine the phrase with other topics: +"ovarian cancer" + treatment for example.

There are many general resource sites, for example, the page created by the National Women's Health Information Center and the Women's Health Resource Center (University of Michigan)

In HopeCAT, the keyword search WOMEN AND HYGIENE (those funny subject headings) finds many titles, including . . .

For the Medically minded:

The New Our Bodies, Ourselves: A Book By and For Women
RA778 .N67 1998

Birth Control and Controlling Birth: Women-Centered Perspectives
RG136.A2 B54

The Women's Health Movement: Feminist Alternatives to Medical Control
RG14.U6 R88

The Hidden Malpractice: How American Medicine Mistreats Women
RG14.U6 C67 1985

For the Spiritually Minded:

Women's Spirituality, Women's Lives
BL625.7 .W655 1995

For the Politically minded:

What Makes Women Sick: Gender and the Political Economy of Health
RA564.85 .D69 1995

Women, Biology, and Public Policy
GN365.9 .W65 1985

For the Culturally minded:

Health Issues for Women of Color: A Cultural Diversity Perspective
RA564.86 .H43 1995

For the Historically minded:

Women, Health, and Medicine in America: a historical handbook
RA564.85 .W664

Motherhood by Choice: Pioneers in Women's Health and Family Planning
HQ764.A2 H87

For the Psychologically minded:

The Gender Gap in Psychotherapy: Social Realities and Psychological Processes
RC451.4 .W6 G46 1984

The Yellow Wallpaper
(read about the “rest cure” prescribed for women not so long ago)
PS1744 .G57 Y4534

A Feminist Position on Mental Health
RC489.F45 B35 1985

Psychological Perspectives on Women's Health
RA564.85 .P89 1994

For the Periodically minded:

Women & Health a journal subscribed to since 1985.
RG1 .W64

For Articles on Women and Health:

Health Reference Center Academic
(choose databases from the Hope College Libraries' home page menu bar)

LexisNexis

FirstSearch (Direct links to FirstSearch databases will only work with Hope IP addresses)

Periodical Abstracts

CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature)

Newspaper Abstracts

CWI (Contemporary Women's Issues)

August 2 , 2001