ABSTRACT
In Chapter 2, I argued that research on women’s health has been shaped by the constellation of factors that orbit the powerful sex (biology)/gender (social) distinction. At this point it may be useful to sum up the main arguments that have been made in this respect so far. We have seen that in contexts where women’s biological bodies have been negatively defined – which marks out most of history – the equation of men and the social, women and the biological has been a fundamental tool for the oppression of women. The sex/gender distinction was a powerful counter-framework and a veritable treasure trove for research on women’s health. But it harboured considerable problems that came to light as research progressed. One of these was a bifurcated agenda, with a tendency to focus on either the social or the biological. Another related problem, touched upon in the preceding chapters but taken up further here, is the focus on male/female difference. As discussed in Chapter 2, when sociological research on health was developing during the 1960s and 1970s, differences between male and female experience, or the bi-polar social script, were a palpable feature of society. It is not surprising that this prompted a search for the factors that differentiate male/female health status and their experience of health and health care. The current chapter focuses on the problems that this poses for the analysis of health.
