Women's Global Health: Norms and State Policies

(Paperback)

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For many women around the globe, health has become the central intersection of the personal and the political; women's bodies are the arena for policy debates about population, poverty, reproduction, and morality.Women's Global Health: Norms and State Policies is a comprehensive assessment of health for women around the globe that will inform debates underway in a wide range of disciplines. These fields include public health, most obviously, but also sociology, anthropology and other disciplines. This book will advance the interdisciplinary fields of ethics, womens studies, and international studies. It answers several questions with implications for knowledge in the preceding fields, along with relevance to policy. Some of these complex questions include: How do the laws and policies of a nation-state affect women's health Is the state invested in these issues because women are seen to be bearers and nurturers of future citizens Or are there other concerns such as economic development, human welfare, or religious ideology that shape this engagement This book also examines the current and historical responsibilities of the state in addressing womens health issues, and how these responsibilities can they be measured and improved upon. Finally, the book looks at how to best approach the underlying ethical issues in practical and useful ways for women around the globe.

Reviews

This book, based on papers presented at a conference held at the University of Southern California, The Ethics of State Involvement in Women's Health, explores womens global health from a multidimensional, transnational perspective. Grounded in previous ethnographic research, the book analyzes the topic from a norms and state policy viewpoint, as the subtitle indicates. Case materials and examples are derived from the United Nations organization, Sweden, Netherlands, Germany, Mozambique, Tanzania, the US, Iran, India, and Sri Lanka. Key subjects addressed in the nine chapters include a definition of womens global health, womens rights, the role and power of women, access to resources, and politics, laws, and governance. The volume is eclectic in its approach to this subject, with contributions from scholars in political science, anthropology, ethics, womens studies, and international studies. The authors make suggestions for an expanded, comprehensive research agenda that underscores the importance of facilitating positive norms and state policies to advance the health of women worldwide. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals/practitioners. * CHOICE *
This new book, Womens Global Health, co-edited by Boyd-Judson and James, fills an important niche in the expanding womens health and politics literature. First, it examines the feedback loop between international norms and domestic policies, and includes some pathbreaking new studies on countries not usually included in comparative texts from Asia and Africa. This type of study has been needed for a long time and will be useful to students and practitioners at many levels. -- Melissa Haussman, Professor of Political Science, Carleton University

Author Bio

Lyn Boyd-Judson is director of the Levan Institute for Humanities and Ethics at the University of Southern California. Patrick James is Dornsife Deans Professor of International Relations and director of the Center for International Studies at the University of Southern California.