tailieunhanh - Exploring the Dirty Side of Women’s Health

Women leak, inevitably and often bountifully. Menstrual blood, birth fluids, breast milk and sometimes tears lead us to be seen as leakier than men at a physical level. Women are often seen to work through a network of relationships, a web, rather than the hierarchy of male decision-making (Gilligan 1982). Within such a web of relationships, emotions, knowledge and other personal attributes flow, often freely, sometimes unconsciously. Dirt is defined by Mary Douglas as ‘matter out of place’ (Douglas 1966). In any context, appropriate place is clearly a matter of categorisation, which is usually done by the socially powerful. What leakage is dirty or threatening, and what. | J EXPLORING THE DIRTY SIDE OF WOMEN S HEALTH EDITED BY MAVIS KIRKHAM Exploring the Dirty Side of Women s Health Women leak inevitably and often bountifully. In this book a selection of international contributors examine bodies leakage and boundaries illuminating the contradictions and dilemmas in women s healthcare. Using the concept of pollution Exploring the Dirty Side of Women s Health highlights how women and health issues are categorised and health workers and women are confined to roles and places defined as socially appropriate. The book explores current and historical practices such as childbirth and midwifery practice policies and social practices around breastfeeding gynaecological nursing female incontinence and sexually transmitted infections miscarriages and termination of pregnancy. Exploring the Dirty Side of Women s Health addresses things out of place from the idea of dirty work to feeling dirty from diagnoses that disrupt our self-image to beliefs and practices which undermine health service provision. This book uses the contradictions in our thinking around pollution and power to stimulate thinking around women s health. It will appeal to students and academics researching midwifery anthropology gender studies and nursing as well as midwives and breastfeeding counsellors. Mavis Kirkham is Professor of Midwifery at Sheffield-Hallam University. She has been a midwife and a researcher for over 30 years and maintains a clinical practice mostly doing home .