Women and fitness in American culture

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Catherine Ingram Fogel and Nancy Fugate Woods

The tremendous forces of political and social change experienced by women in the 1980s have altered their perceptions, expectations - and demands. In the medical arena, this has meant the advancement of a more proactive role for women in the choice and direction of their individual health care. Documenting the shift toward increased personal responsibility, Women's Health Care analyzes myriad women's health issues in a sociological context. Opening with the presentation of vital demographics, the editors structure their initial exploration within specific age groups. The second section focuses on women's experiences as recipients of nursing care, both receiving treatment and seeking preventive care. The next section addresses the promotion of women's health in terms of current theory and research, including such topics as nutrition, exercise, and fertility control. In the final section, the authors consider several common health concerns that are specific to women. Essential reading for practicing nurses and advanced students in nursing, public health, and gender studies interested in women's health issues, Women's Health Care provides an encompassing study of this crucial area.

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Linda Lewis Alexander, Judith H. LaRosa

This dynamic text comprehensively examines dimensions of Women's health. The 1990s have identified women's health as a critical new frontier in health education. This book takes neither a traditional nor feminist approach to women's health. It is a data driven, contemporary combination of both approaches with an emphasis on informed personal decision making. The book offers a scientific review of women's health issues from epidemiological, historical, legal, social and clinical perspectives. The concept of "Consumerism" is stressed throughout the spectrum of women's health issues. Based on scientific data and clinical findings, this book is referenced with the most current information and data available. The text is ideal for courses focusing on women's studies in health education, nursing, allied health, and psychology. . Special Features: clinically accurate assessment of the issues; sensitivity to, and discussion of, the full spectrum of factors that contribute to the issues (ethnic, psycho-social, political, legal, etc.); format helps structure students' analytical and personal decision making skills.

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Chikako Takeshita

The intrauterine device (IUD) is used by 150 million women around the world. It is the second most prevalent method of female fertility control in the global South and the third most prevalent in the global North. Over its five decades of use, the IUD has been viewed both as a means for women's reproductive autonomy and as coercive tool of state-imposed population control, as a convenient form of birth control on a par with the pill and as a threat to women's health. Takeshita investigates the development, marketing, and use of the IUD since the 1960s. She offers a biography of a multifaceted technological object through a feminist science studies lens, tracing the transformations of the scientific discourse around it over time and across different geographies. Takeshita describes how developers of the IUD adapted to different social interests in their research and how changing assumptions about race, class, and female sexuality often guided scientific inquiries. The IUD became a politically versatile technology, adaptable to both feminist and nonfeminist reproductive politics because of researchers attempts to maintain the device's suitability for women in both the developing and the developed world. Takeshita traces the evolution of scientists concerns, from contraceptive efficacy and product safety to the politics of abortion, and describes the most recent, hormone-releasing, menstruation-suppressing iteration of the IUD. Examining fifty years of IUD development and use, finds a microcosm of the global political economy of women's bodies, health, and sexuality in the history of this contraceptive device. From publisher description.

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Hilary Graham

'Unequal Lives' introduces social and health inequalities. It brings together research from social epidemiology, sociology and social policy to guide the reader to an understanding of why people's lives and people's health remain so unequal, even in rich societies where there is more than enough for all.