This entry provides an abbreviated version of the status of women's health in the United States, highlighting health care utilization, health care expenditures, policy issues, barriers to health care, and the impact on populations at risk. The findings accentuate the importance of moving the women's health care agenda forward because of the persistence of health disparities not just among women of color but among women with disabilities, adolescents, women in violent relationships, women with AIDS, women who are incarcerated, women who are homeless, older low-income women, women on welfare, and lesbian women.
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Women: Health Care
Marian A. Aguilar
Article
Women, Development, and Gender Inequality
Lena Dominelli
Women have a lengthy history of fighting their oppression as women and the inequalities associated with this to claim their place on the world stage, in their countries, and within their families. This article focuses on women’s struggles to be recognized as having legitimate concerns about development initiatives at all levels of society and valuable contributions to make to social development. Crucial to their endeavors were: (1) upholding gender equality and insisting that women be included in all deliberations about sustainable development and (2) seeing that their daily life needs, including their human rights, be treated with respect and dignity and their right to and need for education, health, housing, and all other public goods are realized. The role of the United Nations in these endeavors is also considered. Its policies on gender and development, on poverty alleviation strategies—including the Millennium Development Goals and the Sustainable Development Goals—are discussed and critiqued. Women’s rights are human rights, but their realization remains a challenge for policymakers and practitioners everywhere. Social workers have a vital role to play in advocating for gender equality and mobilizing women to take action in support of their right to social justice. Our struggle for equality has a long and courageous history.
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Women: Overview
Ruth A. Brandwein
This overview article introduces the topic of women, beginning with general demographic information. The section on poverty and inequality, which follows, describes the gender differences and delineates some reasons why women are poor and unequal. Issues of child care, welfare, and education are explored. Interpersonal violence and sexual trafficking are discussed, followed by a discussion of health and mental health issues affecting women, including access to health care. The role of women as well as women social workers in politics is briefly explored. Throughout, attention is paid to intersectionality. The article concludes with a discussion of current trends and challenges, with a brief examination of changes in policies affecting women from the Obama presidency to the end of the Trump administration in 2020, including implications for social justice, as well as implications for social work.
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Women: Practice Interventions and Macro Practice
Cheryl A. Hyde
Macro social work practice with women encompasses women as practitioners in organizational, community, and policy arenas, and issues of particular concern to women including violence against women, reproductive rights, family health and well-being, and economic equity. It recognizes that women, as a group, are more likely to be marginalized, subordinated, and oppressed compared to men, as a group. Further, there is awareness of the diversity within the category of “woman.” This article provides an overview of women as macro practitioners, issues central to the lives of women, feminist activism and its influence on macro social work, and examples of macro practice centered on the lived experiences of women. Given the gender inequities and discrimination that women and girls contend with daily, macro social work needs to embrace these issues and strive to dismantle gender-based oppression if the profession’s social justice mission is to be realized in full.
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Women’s Health
Vimla Nadkarni and Roopashri Sinha
The entry outlines a historical and global overview of women’s health in the context of human rights and public health activism. It unravels social myths, traditional norms, and stereotypes impacting women’s health because social workers must understand the diverse factors affecting women’s health in a continually changing and globalized world. There is need for more inclusive feminist and human rights models to study and advocate women’s health. There is as much scope for working with women in a more holistic manner as there is for researching challenging issues and environments shaping women’s health.
