Lesley Doyal draws on a wide range of disciplines to highlight the limitations of medical models in understanding global patterns of health and disease in women. Examining in detail the impact of sexuality, fertility control, reproduction, domestic labour and waged work on women's well-being, she shows how gender divisions in economic and social life affect their experiences of illness, disability and mortality. A concluding chapter illustrates the multiplicity of ways in which women around the world are challenging the threats to their health
This short paper provides an initial consideration of the social context of self-insemination. It examines the situation facing fertile women who wish to have children without the direct involvement of male partners or doctors and discusses some of the issues facing policy makers. The paper challenges the notion that children 'need' two parents and that they should be of different sexes.
Legal status of men who have donated sperm used by women for self-insemination vs. that of sperm donors for artificial insemination performed by a doctor; with reference to child custody and reproductive freedom for lesbians; Great Britain.
The women's health movement in Britain can be divided into three main stages. During the first period, most activities took place outside the National Health Service with the emphasis on women as consumers of medical care. Feminists exposed the sexism inherent in most medical practice and stressed the need for women to gain control of reproductive technology. During the second phase, these priorities began to change towards a greater concern with the NHS and the need to defend it against reductions in resources, and increasing privatisation. These campaigns involved women not just as users of medical services, but also as health workers, bringing the women's health movement into the wider political arena. Socialist feminists argued that feminist participation in health struggles was essential if the NHS was to be not merely defended but qualitatively changed to meet the real needs of users and workers. During the third (and current) stage of the women's health movement, feminists have moved beyond a concern with medical care alone towards the development of a socialist feminist epidemiology - towards the identification and eventual elimination of those aspects of contemporary society that make women sick.
