ABSTRACT
Gender-related social changes in society have the potential to reach deep into the interiors of the body and change traditional health profiles. The current chapter begins by considering the reducing ‘life expectancy gap’ between women and men in many western countries, changing patterns in the major causes of death, namely circulatory disease and cancer, and ways that men and women assess their own health during their lifetimes. It then considers the interpretations that researchers and other commentators have made of these patterns. It is argued that the mixed patterns of change that we are observing can be situated and interpreted within the broad theoretical optic of the ‘new’ single system of patriarchal capitalism, introduced in Chapter 6. Since, both historically and today, the juxtapositions of binary difference and diversity discussed in Chapters 5 and 6 seem particularly marked with reference to young women, they are given specific attention in the next part of the chapter. I consider some of the rather vexed issues raised in Chapter 5 about so-called ‘postfeminism’ to consider the relatively recent ‘new wave’ political writing by young women, asking in particular whether it has the potential to unravel the rather slippery silken ties of the ‘new single system’ as they implicate women’s health. In the final part of the chapter I return to the longstanding feminist concern with women’s reproductive bodies, discussed in Chapter 5, and reflect briefly on the conflicted spaces opened up by the new genetics and new reproductive technologies.
