ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to extend the boundaries of our understanding of women's health in four areas described at the 1991 National Council for International Health (NCIH) Conference: maternal health, menstruation and its effect on nonreproductive functioning, and the neglected areas of occupational health and aging. There are over one hundred acute morbidity episodes for every maternal death—an estimated sixty-two million women suffer maternal problems annually. Despite the medical implications of women's cyclic physiology, however, scientific inquiry into the menstrual cycle has been limited and disjointed. Recognition of the relevance of menstrual function to women's health is not the same as assuming that women are totally defined by their reproductive hormones. A further gap in our understanding of women's health concerns the association between a woman's occupation and her health status. Women who worked outside the home had less time to care for their own needs and had worse nutritional status than women who did not work outside the home.
