Welcome - Gender and Health GWST 3800   Gender and Health
CREDIT HOURS: 3
This course aims to reflect upon and challenge our taken-for-granted assumptions about the gendered dimensions of health and healthcare. Rather than take the categories of 'women's health' and 'men's health' as its foundation, the course revolves around two main questions: (1) how does the field of health and healthcare define and enforce the very categories of 'women' and 'men'?; (2) how does gender, thus defined and enforced, affect the health, healthcare, and health work of those defined as men, women, or other? We will consider these questions by examining particular health topics that have a strongly gendered component, such as sexual health, reproductive health, and disability. Throughout the course, we will explore the theoretical perspectives used in the field; the two-sex model and challenges to it; the gendering of particular health problems and health professions; the medicalization of womanhood and, more recently, manhood; and the relationships between gender and other forms of social classification (e.g. race, class, sexual orientation).
FORMAT: Lecture
PREREQUISITES: One of SOSA 1002.03 or SOSA 1003.03
CROSS-LISTING: SOSA 3145.03
Back