“Discourses of the female body” reading1. How might the medical profession construct notions of the female body? What metaphors are used to describe/define the female body?
2. What is meant by saying that an economic system is imposed on women’s bodies?
3. How might race, class, and ethnicity affect the decisions that women make about their bodies?
4. Constructions of the female body are not the same for all women: How might race, class, and ethnicity affect the construction of the female body?
5. Review the discourse of progress. How is/was this imposed upon male and female bodies?
6. How might the body be seen as a site of resistance?
7. What is meant by the idea that the female body is where battles between competing ideologies are fought? Examples?
“Gender, body, biomedicine: How some feminist concerns dragged reproduction to the center of social theory” reading
1. On p. 467, what do you think Rapp means when she refers to the “‘direct grip’ that culture has on our bodies, through the practices and bodily habits of everyday life?”
2. Interrogate the idea of “nature” as it tends to be associated with the female body (see p. 468). How is “the profound influence of biomedical discourses and practices on the production of gender” ripe for social analysis in light of this representation of nature?
3. What does Rapp mean by “stratified reproduction” (p. 469)?
4. How might new reproductive technologies open up a door to the formerly excluded (see p. 470)? How might they reconstruct an “old landscape where familiar fault lines of eugenic fear and prejudice are easily identified (p. 472)?
“Defining women’s health” reading
1. What might be the difference between a feminist, medical anthropology perspective on women’s health and a biomedical and/or public health establishment perspective (see p. 345-346)?
2. What are the contributions that anthropology can make to women’s health research (see p. 347-348)?
3. Review the dozen “messages” found in medical anthropology ethnographies centering on women’s health according to Inhorn.
“The Politics of Women’s Health” reading
1. Review the concept of “health disparities” as presented in this chapter.
2. How does the U.S. healthcare system differ from those systems with universal coverage, single-payer coverage? Think especially about the statement: “…health should be considered a public good, not a commodity to be sold in the marketplace like a car” (p. 724). What is happening to the two public health services currently offered by our government? What is happening to Medicare and how does this link to the power of the pharmaceutical industry?
3. What is the difference between prevention-based medicine (as advocated by women’s health activists, for instance) and treatment-based medicine?
4. Review the advertisement on p. 729. How do pharmaceutical advertising campaigns tend to medicalize ordinary experience?
5. Why are feminists and social justice activists concerned about embryo cloning? How does this relate to the large market in human eggs? How does this relate to “designer babies?” What about regulation? What about access to this technology?
6. Discuss the issue of the genetic modification of future generations of children. What might be the implications of these technologies? How might this be thought of as a “new eugenics” movement?
7. What is the global gag rule?