Gender and Health in the Social Sciences: Section Introduction

This chapter is a section introduction on the history of gender and health in the social sciences, highlighting significant changes to the conceptualization of both concepts for over a century. By tracing the broad social scientific histories underlying these concepts, this introductory chapter highlights various shifts from structural to agentic theories over the years. It is these shifts, we argue, that have resulted in significant debates between theorists about the best ways to understand gender and health, which the authors in this section of the handbook discuss. This introductory chapter provides an outline of some of the key arguments in the social sciences, tracing the significance of Our Bodies, Ourselves to the Women’s Health Movement in the West (Chapter: Our Bodies, Ourselves: 50 Years of Education and Activism); the decolonization of methodologies in research with Indigenous Peoples in Canada (Chapter: Reclaiming Indigenous Health Research and Knowledges as Self-Determination in Canada); the criticisms of the social ecological approach in addressing men’s violence against women (Chapter: The Limits of Public Health Approaches and Discourses of Masculinities in Violence Against Women Prevention); the psychopathologization of women through unquestioned gender norms (Chapter: The madness of women: Myth and Experience); the gendered normalization of women’s food restriction practices throughout Western history (Chapter: Feminine Hunger: A Brief History of Women’s Food Restriction Practices in the West); and the analysis of industries that profit from the sexual violence of women and girls (Chapter: Systems of Prostitution and Pornography: Harm, Health, and Gendered Inequalities). Taken together, it is hoped that readers continue these debates in the social sciences and continually challenge and build on existing understandings of gender and health.