Images of Women’s Health and Healing: Cultural Prescriptions?

Abstract

We live in a culture in which it is still possible to ascertain categorical differences between the sexes, such that men can take professional, scientific roles in which they examine and in which women may become the object of examination through their sexuality and their relegation to relatively trivialized roles. Within such a culture, polarized images of women as healers and men as doctors have had a continuing historical existence which reflects and is embedded within a number of enduring themes in gender relations pertaining to health, medicine and caring. This chapter explores how such images may have been reinforced, so helping to provide a context for placing the kinds of health issues and actions raised in later chapters.