WOMEN'S HEALTH; A REFLECTION
ANTHROPOLOGY OF WOMEN'S HEALTH

I’ve always been fascinated by the human condition. The layers in which moralism and ethics play a role in how we interact with one another. Depress, suppress, or chose to lift one another. I’ve always built my framework of “what it meant to be a good person” around the idea of preventing limitations of one another. That we are in fact, created equal, but to recognize equity, is to also recognize that we are all so so beautifully different. And it’s in that difference that we are really strong. Powerful. Equal. When someone asks me, “are you a feminist,” the answer is yes. Because despite my deep rooted belief in love and compassion and curiosity, I keep a fierce awareness that this open-arms approach is authentic to a small (but growing) number of people. I began this class because I recognize there is a significant lacking in how women are represented in almost every facet of society. I recognize this as a woman myself. Empirically, my experiences have had a voice through this class. Both my tragedies and my wins, there was a peer reviewed article, a fellow sister whose lyrical shoulders I could lean on to find strength and pride. But context is everything. Without knowing how a problem was created, it becomes difficult to unravel what the problem has done. And in order to share the wins of all the hard work—biological, social, and material—of the strong women before me, I must also share why our fight even began.

I’ve been studying substantially on what are the limiting factors that contribute to mortality. Which, in essence, is a pretty large question, with many features and dimensions to unpack and examine. But if we were to go even broader than this, however, if we were to attempt to simplify this large understanding into a simple question, stripped of bias and color, if we were to ask: “What does it mean to be human,” and decipher the rights to that unique and fragile existence, to live the human condition, then we can dig through history to see what members have been alienated from this very basic right. To be human, with full liberty, is to have movement to rise or recede in whatever spaces, both tangible and internal, that makes them feel safe. To be human, is to have a voice that is heard amongst those we share our world with, that has an equal opportunity of impact and inspiration. To be human, is to have the right to govern this vessel, this body, none of us really ever had a choice in choosing, but here we are, sustaining it. To be human, is to love freely, if that is your choice, to live freely, if that is your need, and to speak freely, if that’s how you feel.  Over the course of several millennia, the fight for this utopic mindset has been carried amongst those who contribute the most. Amongst women, amongst people of color, amongst the disabled, amongst the gendered and racialed other whose box cannot be placed... amongst those whose identity is synonymous with weak, or lazy, or less than. Whose value is reduced. Neutralized. And whose voices are quieted, silenced, murdered. Over the course of several millennia, the fight for equity amongst those who recognize what I have always felt, has not been easy. But whose contributions ring louder and longer than they might have ever hoped. To speak about equity amongst present groups, is to speak on the dichotomy that stands in existence. To speak about women, is to also speak about men. To speak about feminism, is to speak about patriarchy. And to speak about feminism, is to speak about women’s health.

Bell Hook’s described feminism as being for everyone. I believe the harmony she was trying to accomplish and establish with her book from 2000 “Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics,” was one that matched my own. That in order to understand why women are limited or set back, or the ways in which “male domination and sexism are expressed in everyday life created awareness in women of the ways we were victimized, exploited, and, in worse case scenarios, oppressed” (hooks, Into, pp.2). Bell hooks explored the facets of feminism, but more importantly, the intentions that instigated a movement that hit every culture in waves. Like many other writers of the 19th century, this open dialogue that set forth art and craft from many mediums to express the censored silence that had long been exhausted. Writer’s like Audre Lorde, whose work has impacted my own life, but who’s work gave women of color, especially gay women of color, a voice, a space, and a mission to move into equiteous bonds amongst the bodies around them. This not only meant the men around them, but women too. My favorite position Lorde has held is when she speaks towards difference. That “it is not our differences that separate women, but our reluctance to recognize those difference” (Lorde, Ch.16, pp. 543). I have personally read many of Lorde’s work, her collective wisdom is something I’ve always admired, but it is her empathy and need to connect to her sisterhood, is something that I have resonated with. Leslie Doyal bring women’s rights, but specifically, women’s health and the rights therein, she calls out to the series of social disparities that contributed to poor women’s health. That within the scope of what is expected of a woman, not all of it is valued—in the material sense. “The household in not the only workplace for a woman” (Doyal, Ch. 2, pp. 29). The neutralization and devaluement of women’s work, both biological and production, has contributed to this movement of establishing equity.

Women’s health, or women’s reproductive work, has also been devalued and neutralized. Having many friends with children, I will often here them say that being a mother is a “full time job.” The exploitations amongst women’s work, whether it is in or out of the home, has contributed to how women are represented in other industries and forms of care. For women’s health specifically, the need for subjectivity and feminist research within the scope of researching ailments specifically to women, has been called into necessity. And even more so, the need and right to govern the decisions of a woman’s body, has also started a massive movement for reproduction rights – to which I am vehemently passionate about and actively participate in supporting.

While the disparity between men and women, and even deeper, between women and other women, the need for equity has been ringing loud and clear for well over a century. Women from all creeds are coming forth to establish their needs for representation and protection and justice to live as freely as those who stand beside them. And in the words of Dr. Sumaya Mohamed pointed out, “while progress is slow, it’s still progress.”

Work’s Cited:

Lorde, Audre. 1984. “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference.” In Sister Outsider. Freedom, CA; Crossing Press.

Doyal, Leslie. 1995. Chap. 2. “Hazards of Hearth and Home”  What Makes Women Sick: Gender and the Political Economy of Health.  New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.

Hooks, bell. 2000. “Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics.” Cambridge, MA; South End Press.