The legacy of early critiques of women's health

Thirty years ago Women's Health was a field fighting for recognition in a world dominated by androcentric research, theory and clinical intervention. Today it is a rich and vibrant body of work, spanning many diverse disciplines. The health of women is now firmly on the agenda of the World Health Organization, government and research funding bodies, providers of health services and educators. Researchers, theorists and social activists continue to move knowledge and practice forwards, improving service provision for women, at the same time as we reach a greater understanding of ‘what women want’ regarding their health.

Yet it hasn't always been this way. The last few decades of the twentieth century have seen the publication of a number of groundbreaking studies and critical polemics which highlighted the paucity of knowledge about the health and wellbeing of women. They documented how women's bodies, women's minds, and by extension, women's lives have historically been marginalized, ignored or dealt with in a detrimental way by mainstream health professions. Whole disciplines such as medicine, psychology and psychiatry were subjected to critical scrutiny. It was argued that women's mental health was defined in relation to man as the norm, and inevitably found wanting as a result. Femininity was pathologized, with mental health treatments merely serving as vehicles of social control, pushing women back into patterns of behaviour and social roles which were sources of distress and despair in the first place.