Diana L. Gustafson
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Reproducing Women
Family and Health Work across Three Generations
How do women experience reproductive health? How is knowledge about health issues transmitted from one generation to the next? Utilizing sociological and feminist lenses, Reproducing Women argues that women experience reproductive health as a part of their entire life story, rather than as discrete medical “problems.” Drawing together stories and interviews with three generations of women across twenty-four families, this book examines women’s experience of their “reproductive lives” in order to uncover how women’s experience is rooted in the family and among generational relationships: between mother, daughter, grandmother and granddaughter. By placing women’s biological and embodied experiences, including issues such as menarche, contraception, sexual intercourse, childbirth and menopause, in a social and cultural context, women’s broader roles in ‘social reproduction’ are revealed.
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Care and Consequences
The Impact of Health Care Reform
Over the past decade health care in Canada has shifted from a cure-care model to a business model. Disguised behind talk of community, care closer to home, consumer choice, patient rights, cost-containment and improved efficiencies, the business model has ushered in “bottom line” financial management which has brought us steadily deteriorating health care services. Framed within a clear analysis of this new health care model, the articles in this collection illustrate how diverse groups in various social and institutional contexts are navigating through a changing health care system-a system upon which women in particular rely for their wellbeing as caregivers and care recipients; a system that operates more and more on the logic of scientific management.