ABSTRACT
Introduction The last decade has seen an escalating interest in understanding the health of women. As women’s health has been explored, the limits of biomedical approaches in understanding health and illness have become evident. Reliance on biological and physiological explanation of women’s health and illness is challenged by documentation of the ways in which women’s location in complex social, political, and economic relations affects the content and meaning of their lives, including their experience of health and sense of well-being. Gender is shown to be a major axis of difference that affects health status, while class, “race,” and nationality are also interrelated in complex ways with health inequalities. Social science is now commonly, but not universally, acknowledged as an essential ingredient in understanding women’s health, one that must take into account the various dimensions of “context” in which women live.
