Sophiologist

Is women’s health really going mainstream? I’m not so sure. Personally, I’m happy to see women’s health issues getting any kind of attention. Or money.

I have a sort of visceral dislike of the color pink myself—radical potential of embracing traditionally feminine symbols aside—so I don’t particularly enjoy seeing it on every other damn product at the store. But I also think criticizing campaigns like these is premature and short-sighted, particularly when women’s health is so manifestly neglected in science, research funding, and social policy around the world.

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brooklynmutt:

Think About Pink

What message are girls really getting from breast-cancer activism?

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Fast-forward to today, when, especially during October, everything from toilet paper to buckets of fried chicken to the chin straps of N.F.L. players look as if they have been steeped in Pepto. If the goal was “awareness,” that has surely been met — largely, you could argue, because corporations recognized that with virtually no effort (and often minimal monetary contribution), going pink made them a lot of green.

Continue reading… NYTimes

Reblogged from have a heart

Tags: women's health

Women's Health and Women's Leadership in Academic Medicine: Hitting the Same Glass Ceiling?

“Throughout U.S. history, many advances in women’s health have been led by women. As reviewed by Carol Weisman,¹⁰ past women’s health movements initiated and sustained by women include (1) the Popular Health Movement in the early to mid-1800s (which included advocating corsetless clothing), (2) the post-Civil War women’s medical movement, in which the first generation of female physicians were prominent participants advocating women’s inherent health and vitality in opposition to the prevailing medical view of women as sickly and frail, (3) the Progressive Era in the early 1900s, during which the first birth control clinic was opened in Brooklyn by public health nurse and social activist Margaret Sanger, government-funded maternal and child health services were developed, and the Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Act of 1921 was passed (emblematic of the new political influence of women who gained the right to vote in 1920), and (4) the women’s health movement of the 1960s and 1970s, a grassroots effort in which women’s reproductive rights were viewed as essential to full gender equity, the prevailing assumptions and practices of mainstream medicine (controlled almost exclusively by male physicians) were challenged, and women’s restricted admission to medical schools was effectively eliminated by enactment of Title IX of the Civil Rights Act in 1972. This set the stage for the most recent women’s health movement occurring between approximately 1985 and 2000. (Before women were allowed entry into male-only medical schools, there were 16 women-only medical schools founded and run by women physicians. By 1910, all but 3 of these had closed or merged with traditional schools which led to a reduction in the number of women medical students from 6% in 1900 to 4% in 1930.¹¹)
Once admission restrictions were removed, the number of women enrolled in U.S. allopathic medical schools rose from about 10% in 1970 to approximately 50% today.^11,12 By the early 1980s, when the proportion of women medical students reached 30%, women physicians—who have consistently entered academic medicine in greater proportion than their male counterparts¹³—began to reach a critical mass in academic medicine. These women, many of whom came of age during the women’s health movement of the 1960s and 1970s, realized that medical education, healthcare, and biomedical research excluded women’s social and biological experiences, even pathologizing normal female life events, and that this androcentric approach was not only detrimental to the health of women but also socially unjust.^14–20

—Read on for more fascinating women’s health history. It still amazes me to think of what women my mother’s age—the same Baby Boomer age of the women who are my doctors now—had to go through.

Tags: women's health

A nightmare? No, the menopause was the BEST thing that ever happened to us | Mail Online

“Like most women, Monica had dreaded her middle-age milestone. She believed that the menopause would cause her to lose her sex drive, her sparkle and her memory. And with the arrival of hot flushes and mood swings, she feared she’d lose every shred of femininity.

‘I was convinced that I’d turn into an old crone over night - it’s what we’ve all been made to think,’ she says. ‘In fact, exactly the opposite has happened.

‘I’ve got more energy and more confidence than I’ve ever had before. And I’ve become so much more daring.” …

Monica is one of a growing band of women who are convinced the menopause is the best thing that has ever happened to them.

Far from losing their zip, they swear that the menopause has actually given them a totally new lease of life. Internet sites and forums are alive with postings from women asking what’s wrong with them, because the menopause is such a breeze.

Others boast of wonderful freedom it has given them - not having to worry about monthly cycles, for example. …

So why does the menopause - which is deemed to start after a woman has not had a period for 12 months - get such a shocking press normally? And why do so many women say they hate it?

Louise Foxcroft, author of Hot Flushes, Cold Science, a book exploring the history of the menopause, is convinced that it’s down to the Victorians.

‘Until the 18th century, the menopause was seen as a natural phenomenon. But over the next 100 years it began to be viewed as a disease, leading to bizarre treatments and extremely dangerous surgery,’ she says. ‘The Victorians were deeply suspicious of women’s reproductive health. They thought there was a direct link between the womb and the brain which predisposed women to insanity, particularly during menopause.’

Even now, studies into the effects of the menopause all start from the assumption that women are going to feel worse not better.

‘It’s a peculiarly Western attitude,’ says professor Mary Ann Lumsden, chair of the British Menopause Society. ‘In India, women have the same symptoms but they regard the menopause as a very positive experience, because getting old gives them more status, not less.

‘Here, most women enter the menopause with dread - as that’s the message we’ve been given. In fact, a lot of women don’t even realise they have gone through the menopause.

‘Only 25 per cent of women will report symptoms such as hot flushes, vaginal dryness, mood swings and aches and pains. And in 85 per cent of women, these dissipate naturally within a few years.

‘So much of it is down to expectations and what’s going on in your head. We are very suggestible. I have done countless trials where up to 30 per cent of the women, who didn’t know they’d been prescribed a placebo instead of HRT, claim they have got better even though there’s no medical reason for their improvement.

‘They believed the drug was working so they felt more positive. Of course symptoms can be bad, but if you enter the menopause with the mind set that you will get through fine, you really will be helping yourself.’”

—-What a refreshing article. I can’t see something like this ever being printed in the U.S. In fact, I can’t see anything positive about women’s reproductive health being printed in mainstream media in the U.S. It’s so nice to hear about menopause from an optimistic angle … since it’s an essential part of the life cycle of half the human race, and all.

Check out more inspiring stories of women changing their lives at midlife in the full story.

One last quote, this one from Caroline Moor, interviewed in the story:

“I used to be such a wimp that my friends and family can’t believe it.

‘I really love pushing the boundaries, and I honestly feel that I’m capable of doing anything now. I’m the first of my friends to go through the menopause. They’re stunned. Like me, they believed the menopause catapults you into premature old age. But I’m now convinced a lot of it’s down to attitude.

‘I feel infinitely more sexy and confident now and far more carefree.”

Tags: menopause positivity women's health

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