Gender, Health and Care
1. Why focus on Women to Understand and Improve Health Care:
- Women and men use health care system differently
- Women provide paid & unpaid health care work, majority of women receiving care (women’s work).
- Few women in positions of power within health care services and policy organization
- Box 13.2: medication and women (p. 336)
What has been done?
- What is gender-sensitive- recognition on how gender shapes and is shaped by other conditions, practices and relations of power and market and how they produce inequality.
- Means how gender intersects with other social locations; age, income, culture, disability, and racialization
What is gender sensitive research? (p. 333) - Emerged within and from the women’s movement – demonstrates the importance of gender (men & women) - Relations between men & women - Power relations (emphasizes on subordination shared by all women) - Gender- sensitive research – can study both men and women without searching for comparison - Developed many tools of analysis – that helps us to see gendered causes, processes, and consequences.
2. Legislation and Policies in Canada to include a gender-sensitive analysis in health care (pressure from women movement)
- Women’s Health Bureau - Centre of Excellence Program for Women’s Health - Canadian Women’s Health Network - Canadian Institute of Health Research - Institute of Gender and Health
- Health Canada – recognition of gender as a determinant of health (p. 334), gender draws attention to the social construction of female/male differences (Reiker & Bird)
3. (Romanow Report, 2002)
- 80 % of women provide paid & unpaid health care, majority receiving care (women’s work).
What are the failures in this report? (p.340)
Accessible, Appropriate Care
- Recognition that men and women