Feminism Technology Media and Heath Flashcards
Women’s Health Movement 1960s
• Consciousness raising
• Challenged androcentric bias in medical research
• “Woman-centered vision of health”
• Drew attention to the political, economic, social, and environmental factors that impact health
• Gender as an important determinant of health
Increased visibility of women’s health issues
Neoliberalism
- Political and economic rationality
- Rooted in classical economic theory
- Homoeconomicus - rational economic actor
- Emphasizes reduced government spending in favour of a reliance on market logic to address economic crises and social problems (e.g. for profit prisons, privatization of health care and child care)
- Minimal state intervention in markets
Neoliberalism and postfeminism
- Resonance between the two
- Women as autonomous, agentic, empowered
- Promote a similar subjectivity – self-responsible, self-managing individual
- Individual responsibility, choice, freedom
Ideal neoliberal subject
To a much larger extent than men, women are required to work on and transform the self, to regulate every aspect of their conduct, and to present all their actions as freely chosen. Could it be that neoliberalism is always already gendered, and that women are constructed as its ideal subjects?
Go Red for women
“Go Red For Women encourages awareness of the issue of women and heart disease, and also action to save more lives. The movement harnesses the energy, passion and power women have to band together and collectively wipe out heart disease. It challenges them to know their risk for heart disease and take action to reduce their personal risk. It also gives them the tools they need to lead a heart healthy life”
Social Determinants of Health
• Access to resources, opportunities, and services
• conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age, including the health system- shaped by distribution of money, power and resources at global, national and local levels, which are themselves influenced by policy choices
- “Zip code better predictor of health than genetic code”
Pinkwashing
Pinkwashing is a term we coined in 2002 to describe a company or organization that claims to care about breast cancer, but at the same time makes or promotes products linked to the disease. For example, each year, the Avon Foundation puts on multi-day breast cancer walks in cities nationwide. But Avon Products, the multi-billion dollar cosmetics corporation behind the foundation, uses chemicals in its makeup that are linked to an increased risk of breast cancer.
