Health: Discipline Analysis. Women in the Curriculum Series.

This essay examines the ways in which health, as a discipline, has been influenced by feminist scholarship in the field. It explains that feminist scientists in the field have recognized and sought to address gender bias in traditional approaches to health research, including the androcentric bias in defining priorities for medical research, the lack of funding for clinical research on women, failure to recognize the effects of gender, and interactions between gender, ethnicity, and class in research. There is growing evidence to support the assertion that access to health care differs in accordance with gender, race, class, and age, and excessive focus on male research subjects and the definition of some diseases as "male" diseases has led to the underdiagnosis and undertreatment of these diseases in older women. It also notes that the exclusion of women of color and lesbians (and their health care needs) from clinical research has often resulted in inadequate or inappropriate theories and conclusions being drawn from the data. (Contains 110 references.) (MDM)