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.

Olena Hankivisky is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science and co-director of the Institute for Critical Studies in Gender and Health at Simon Fraser University.

Colleen Varcoe is an associate professor in the School of Nursing at the University of British Columbia.

Marina Morrow is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences and co-director of the Institute for Critical Studies in Gender and Health at Simon Fraser University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Beyond Gender Matters
COLLEEN VARCOE, OLENA HANKIVSKY, and MARINA MORROW

Part One: Locating Ourselves

1. ‘Our Bodies, Our Selves’ in Context: Reflections on the Women’s Health Movement in Canada
   MARINA MORROW
2. More than Age and Biology: Overhauling Lifespan Approaches to Women’s Health
   OLENA HANKIVSKY

Part Two: Theory and Methods

3. Feminist Methodology and Health Research: Bridging Trends and Debates
   MARINA MORROW and OLENA HANKIVSKY
4. Postcolonial Feminist Theoretical Perspectives and Women’s Health
   ANNETTE BROWNE, VICTORIA L. SMYE, and COLLEEN VARCOE
5. Gender-Based Analysis and Health Policy: The Need to Rethink Outdated strategies
   OLENA HANKIVSKY
6. Engendering Evidence: Transforming Economic Evaluations
   OLENA HANKIVSKY and JANE FRIESEN

Part Three: The Social Determinants of Health

7. Women’s Health and the Politics of Poverty and Exclusion
   COLLEEN REID
8. Women’s Health at the Intersection of Gender and the Experience of International Migration 221
   BILKIS VISSANDJÉE, WILFREDA THURSTON, ALISHA APALE, and KAMRUN NAHAR
9. Cultures of Dis/ability: From Being Stigmatized to Doing Disability
   LISA DIEDRICH
10. Negotiating Sexualities in Women’s Health Care
    CYNTHIA MATHIESON
11. Mothering and Women’s Health
    COLLEEN VARCOE and GWENETH HARTRICK DOANE

Part Four: Key Issues in Women’s Health

12. Women, Drug Regulation, and Maternal/State Conflicts
    SUSAN C. BOYD
13. Women’s Voices Matter: Creating Women-Centred Mental Health Policy
    MARINA MORROW
14. Between Visibility and Vulnerability: Women and HIV/AIDS
    MEREDITH RAIMONDO
15. Breast Cancer: Lived Experience and Feminist Action
    SUE WILKINSON
16. Selling ‘The Change’: A Comparison of the Dangers of Hormone Replacement Therapies in Profit versus National Health Care Delivery Systems
    BRIAN RICHTER and CINDY PATTON
17. Women’s Health and Cardiovascular Care: A Persistent Divide
    LYNN E. YOUNG
18. From Global to Local and Over the Rainbow: Violence Against Women
    OLENA HANKIVSKY and COLLEEN VARCOE
19. Women’s Access to Maternity Services in Canada: Historical Developments and Contemporary Challenges
    CECILIA BENOIT, DENA CARROLL, and RACHEL WESTFALL
20. Relocating Care: Home Care in Ontario
    PAT ARMSTRONG

Contributors