Section Eight: Bodies
Learning Objectives
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To understand how women’s bodies are socially constructed.
To be familiar with the ways that race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality affect women’s
access to health care, how women see their bodies, and their treatment by the heath
industry.
To be aware of the hierarchies embedded in the medical establishment and how this
affects women’s health care body image.
Section Summary
Although physical bodies and health may seem to be purely biological, they are also socially
constructed. Cultural ideologies affect how we understand our own physical bodies.
 Social institutions like politics, medicine, and the media shape women’s access to health
care and healthy work conditions and shape the way women see themselves.
 Women’s bodies are often the site of political contestation and control, and feminists
have often focused on changing health policies.
 Historically the healthcare industry viewed women’s bodies as abnormal and diseased.
 The women’s health movement challenged the way medicine treated women and assisted
women in reclaiming control over their bodies. Today this movement must focus on new
technologies and work alongside other movements.
 Race, class, religion, nationality, and sexuality intersect with gender to socially construct
women’s bodies.
Reading 37: Anne Fausto-Sterling, “The Bare Bones of Sex: Part 1- Sex and Gender”
Fausto-Sterling is a biologist who uses human bone (structure, density, propensity to break, etc.)
as an example of the complicated interconnected relationship of nature and nurture in shaping
human bodies and experience. She introduces a life-course dynamic systems approach to the
analysis of sex/gender which suggests that bodies are shaped by various and dynamic social
processes as well as by genes and hormones. Fausto-Sterling suggests that to understand the
body and to ward off disease we must recognize that we are both 100% nature and 100% nurture
at all times.
 Sterling begins with examples that demonstrate how lived experiences resulting from
cultural eating habits, occupation, exercise routine, race, and geographic location likely
shape bones.
 Feminists, particularly those in the social sciences, and biologists must understand the
body to be simultaneously made up of genes, hormones, organs, and cells as well as
culture and history which ALL influence both health and behavior. Although feminists
have attempted to separate sex and gender and have focused on gender as determined by
culture, Sterling points to research in disability studies which bring the body back into the
picture.
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In medicine, and biological psychology, scientists continue to examine how biological
sex determines a number of gender behaviors and thus creates differences between the
sexes. Many of those interested in this work are feminists, such as the Society for
Women’s Health Research, who are attempting to bring gender equity to the healthcare
system, but they fail to understand the role of culture in shaping the body.
Fausto-Sterling examines bones because of the long history of the use of bones to
understand history and because problems with bones such as diseases demonstrate the
difficulty of defining sex apart from gender.
Claims about gender differences in osteoporosis are dependant upon our definition of the
disease. Most studies and doctors rely on bone mineral density tests which are cheap and
have been promoted by drug companies, and this has replaced older diagnoses which
relied on broken bones. However, volumetric measures and knowledge of bone strength
may better determine one’s risk of osteoporosis. How and why men and women’s bone
density differs at various points in the life-cycle is still not well understood as scientists
do no understand the role of hormones or of culture in shaping our bones.
A dynamic systems approach doesn’t just look at parts of the body by themselves, but
rather looks to understand issues by looking at the whole.
In a figure Fausto-Sterling demonstrates how physical activity, diet, drugs, bone
formation in fetal development, hormones, bone cell metabolism, and biomechanical
effects of bone formation can be analyzed as a complex system. Each of these systems
relates to each other and produce bodies that either develop osteoporosis or not.
Reading 38: Becky Wangsgaard Thompson, "’A Way Outa No Way:’ Eating Problems
among African-American, Latina, and White Women”
Interviews with a diverse group of lesbians and women of color demonstrate that, for many
women, eating problems are related to trauma. We must understand the diverse causes of eating
problems in order to find help for those women who are at the intersection of multiple axes of
oppression.
 Women who are lesbian, poor, or non-white experience eating disorders that cannot be
primarily linked to the media-constructed “culture of thinness.”
 Many women who experience eating problems trace the onset of these problems to
oppression in the form of sexual abuse, racism, classism, heterosexism, and sexism.
Some of these women experienced multiple traumas that contributed to their problem.
 Sexual abuse, which was the most common trauma these women experienced, left the
women feeling out of control or needing to change or punish their bodies.
 Poverty and heterosexism caused stress that food helped these women forget.
 Some minority women were pressured to make their bodies different in order to aid their
families’ assimilation into a higher class standing.
 For these women, their relationship with food was a way to regain control over their lives
or to anesthetize the pain of their trauma or oppression.
 The traumas distorted women’s views of their own bodies and blocked their ability to feel
connected to their bodies.
Reading 39: Simone Weil Davis, “Loose Lips Sink Ships”
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Davis explores the construction of the “problem” of an abnormal labia which can be corrected
with cosmetic surgeries that provide women with “designer vaginas” through labiaplasty. She
argues that this surgery and other vaginal surgeries like female genital mutilation should be seen
on a continuum that involves a more complex understanding of the choices and cultural
constraints involved in the surgeries.
 Labiaplasty is a cosmetic procedure that involves cutting labial tissue or injecting fat into
the labia in order to correct “excessively droopy” or “abnormal” labia. Doctors and
patients seek minimal, unextended, symmetrical, and pink labia that are “not wavy.”
 Although most American women are happy with their genitalia, this surgery creates new
fears and self-consciousness for women about their bodies: are their labia normal?
 Cosmetic surgery uses medical language and classical aesthetics to secure modern
credibility for their construction of an “ideal” body and genitalia.
 Labiaplasty helps women obtain the idealized airbrushed or altered (fake) body.
 Current vaginal surgeries derive from a history of Western culture that has pathologized
women’s sexuality and sexual organs and whose constructions of women have vacillated
between modesty and lustiness, often with racist conceptions of the “other” women.
o Western doctors performed legal vaginal surgeries to “cure” women of various
“problems” through the 1970’s with at least one doctor performing them illegally
through the 1980s.
o Today the genitalia of intersex children are also altered without their consent in
order to force the body to conform to cultural ideals of gender.
o Racism, classism, and sexism affected how doctors treated colonized women and
who they practiced surgeries on.
 Western opposition to female genital operations (FGO) in African females is often
ethnocentric and oversimplified.
o Although African women have less resources to keep their bodies from the public
gaze, this procedure is very similar to Western cosmetic vaginal surgeries.
o While FGOs are outlawed in the United States very similar surgeries performed
by Western doctors are not.
o Cultural and social ideas of what is desired in women manufacture consent for
both procedures. Vaginal surgeries have various meanings. African FGO can hold
cultural, religious and even meaning.
o Women who receive both types of surgeries are primarily seeking beautification,
transcendence of shame, and conformity.
o The preferred look following both FGO and labiaplasty is the “clean slit.”
o Women are not just duped by males into having this surgery. Rather, women’s
own agency plays an important role in constructing the “need” for both of these
surgeries by encouraging other women to undergo surgery.
 Although this surgery does nothing to actually help women, the cosmetic surgery
industry has appropriated feminist language and practices in order to encourage women
to feel they are independently choosing to have the surgery. The industry has
appropriated the women’s movements’ discourse of self-knowledge, choice/
independence, community building/self-help, and increasing the medical community’s
responsiveness to women.
 Finally, Davis encourages women to “speak back” to these constructions of abnormal
female sexuality and sexual organs, and she applauds those who do so.
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Reading 40: Andrea Smith, “Beyond Pro-Choice versus Pro-Life: Women of Color and
Reproductive Justice”
Reproductive justice is better understood from outside the dichotomy between pro-life and prochoice. Smith demonstrates how both of these arguments uphold and mask racial hierarchies and
capitalism, and both positions do little to support women of color.
 The pro-life position maintains that a fetus is a life and concludes that abortion should be
criminalized and people should be penalized with imprisonment. Smith questions the
usefulness of criminalization as a response to this issue.
 Criminalization would contribute to the prison-industrial complex that disproportionately
hurts minorities and the poor. Prisons are the modern method used to control these
populations. In addition, prisons do not decrease (and could increase) crime rates, but
they do take resources away from other institutions that could more effectively address
social issues.
 The criminal justice system’s intervention into women’s issues like domestic violence
and rape has not been successful.
 Smith suggests that those in the pro-life camp pay close attention to other Christian
evangelicals who have questioned the efficacy of the criminal justice system. She also
suggests that the pro-choice position should also come from an anti-prison position,
particularly since many poor and minority women are having their pregnancies
criminalized.
 The pro-choice position rests on an individualist and consumerist notion of choice, rather
than on a system of rights which are benefits available to all. Choices are limited by the
social, economic, and political conditions surrounding people.
 Reproductive “choices” are often very limited for poor and minority women. The prochoice position only guarantees reproductive choices to women who can afford them and
who are seen as able to make “good choices.”
 Pro-choice groups have often supported dangerous or potentially dangerous
contraceptives and rejected informed consent for nonwhite or poor women.
 Many pro-choice organizations have racist histories and allies. Historically, Planned
Parenthood collaborated with the eugenics movement to reduce the poor and minority
population. Today pro-choice organizations are often aligned with organizations that
attempt to reduce population growth. These organizations blame poor women for the
problems of population growth and have often sterilized women in foreign countries
without their consent. This focus on population eliminates women’s choices rather than
expands them.
 Additionally, the pro-choice camp often has a single-issue political agenda that promotes
other structures of repression for women, particularly women of color.
 Both the pro-choice and the pro-life positions assume a criminal justice framework for
focusing on reproductive issues, both reinforce racist and sexist hierarchies, and both do
not question the capitalist system. Smith suggests that we need to search for the causes of
many of the problems facing women in order to fully ensure reproductive justice.
 Smith suggests that women of color need to engage in base-building work in order to
argue for social institutions that will better serve the reproductive rights of all women.
Reading 41: Barbara Ehrenreich, “Welcome to Cancerland”
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As a survivor herself, Ehrenreich angrily criticizes the “pink-ribbon marketplace” and “cult of
the breast-cancer survivor” that normalizes the experiences of breast cancer to the point that
having breast cancer is presented as positive and the causes of the disease are ignored.
 Cancer, a group of cells that multiply so rapidly that they eventually destroy the body
they inhabit, is a lot like the runaway social processes in human life.
 Although breast-cancer is no longer a disease kept secret, the rate of survival from breast
cancer is littler better today than in the 1930s.
 Today’s breast-cancer patients can find an overwhelming amount of information on the
process of breast-cancer, but this information is almost always packaged in cheery,
survivor-as-hero, language. Those who feel anger or other emotions are typically
marginalized in the big machinery of the modern breast-cancer world.
 The pink-ribbon marketplace offers thousands of “feminine” products that often support
breast-cancer research or survivors. Many of the products infantilize the women who
have breast-cancer.
 The mainstream breast-cancer movement has adopted several aspects of feminism, like
self-help groups, without actually incorporating any feminist ideology or a critical
awareness of the causes of the disease. However, feminist organizations focus on causes
and prevention. One of the suspected causes is environmental carcinogens. Corporate
sponsors would not be so willing to “support” the breast-cancer movement if it attacked
the environmental problems of industrialization.
 Those who have lived through the disease are called “survivors” and these women (and a
few men), are heralded by the movement instead of those who died from the disease.
 The breast cancer culture feels like a cult to Ehrenreich because it enforces cheerfulness
and prohibits dissent. Much of the breast-cancer culture seems to positively embrace the
disease for its redemptive powers and “opportunities for self-improvement” or at least
self-transformation.
 Critics of the of the mainstream breast-cancer movement suggest that its activities are
inefficient ways to find cures for breast-cancer and instead promote the corporate
sponsors and the breast cancer industry. The movement claims that this all raises
awareness about the disease, but the awareness has done little to decrease rates of cancer
or increase early detection.
 The breast-cancer cult is complicit in global poisoning because it encourages women to
suspend judgment, follow their doctors’ advice, and see cancer as a positive experience.
However, multinational corporations benefit from polluting the environment with cancercausing agents and from expensive cancer treatments that are painful and rarely extend
the life of the women who undergo treatment.
Boxed Insert: Eli Clare, “Stolen Bodies, Reclaimed Bodies: Disability and Queerness”
Justice movements like the disability rights movement have disentangled the body from society’s
treatment of disabled bodies, but Clare points out that the body is a necessary aspect of
oppression and identity.
 Cultures have often suggested that disabled bodies, or queer bodies or other nonhegemonic bodies, are “wrong.” The disability rights movement suggests that the focus
should not be on the body, but rather on unjust cultural treatment of the disabled. This has
shifted the focus away from the physical body and locates the problem within culture’s
ableism, or disability oppression, rather than within the disabled person.
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Clare reclaims the disabled body by suggesting that people pay attention to their physical
forms and celebrate the differences of physical bodies. If bodily differences and
difficulties are not discussed, activists will not be able to transform their culture.
Discussion Questions
Reading 37: Anne Fausto-Sterling, “The Bare Bones of Sex: Part 1- Sex and Gender”
1. What are the problems with current thinking by feminist social scientists about gender
and sex? What is wrong with how medical scientists look at this issue?
2. What are some examples of how culture shapes our bones?
3. What are the seven systems that Fausto-Sterling identifies as being important for bone
density and development? How do these systems relate to each other?
Reading 38: Becky Wangsgaard Thompson, "’A Way Outa No Way:’ Eating Problems
among African-American, Latina, and White Women”
4. What have many feminists claimed is the reason for eating disorders? What did
Thompson find was the cause?
5. How are traumas and oppressions related to eating disorders? How is food used? How
does trauma cause women to feel about their bodies?
6. What needs to change in order to stop eating disorders?
Reading 39: Simone Weil Davis, “Loose Lips Sink Ships”
7. What is a labiaplasty? What look are most women trying to achieve with this surgery?
8. Why do the women say they had this surgery? What are the cultural reasons that Davis
says that women have the surgery?
9. How is a labiapsty similar to female genital mutilation? How is it different? What power
differences exist between the African women and the American women? Do you see
these surgeries as similar? Why or why not?
10. How has the medical industry co-opted feminist language and practices in order to
encourage women to have a labiaplasty? What do you think this says about out culture?
11. What can women do to stop disturbing trends in cosmetic surgeries and FGM?
Reading 40: Andrea Smith, “Beyond Pro-Choice versus Pro-Life: Women of Color and
Reproductive Justice”
12. What are the main problems with the pro-life position according to Smith? What are the
problems with the pro-choice position?
13. How are the pro-life and the pro-choice positions similar? How do both of these positions
treat poor or minority women?
14. How can a new political focus on reproductive justice be constructed in a way that does
not oppress minority or poor women?
Reading 41: Barbara Ehrenreich, “Welcome to Cancerland”
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15. How does Ehrenreich describe the mainstream breast-cancer movement and her
experiences of cancer? Why does she call it a cult?
16. Why is she critical of this movement? What are her major complaints about the way this
culture treats women? Do you think this culture helps women and cancer patients in
general? Why or why not?
17. How does the feminist movement react differently to breast-cancer organizing?
18. What does Ehrenreich suggest is a probable cause of breast-cancer? Why does the
movement not focus on this cause? What consequences does this have for women?
Boxed Insert: Eli Clare, “Stolen Bodies, Reclaimed Bodies: Disability and Queerness”
19. How has the disability movement treated bodies? Why does Eli Clare want to reclaim the
body?
20. How is the treatment of the queer body and the disabled body similar? Why do you think
Clare includes both types of bodies in the title?
Assignments and Exercises
Women’s Health Movement: In order for students to understand the implications of the
exclusion of most women of color and poor women from the historical women’s health
movement, ask students to write a short paper on one aspect of the women’s health movement
that carefully looks at race or class. Topics may include eugenics and the birth-control
movement, the exclusion of forced sterilization from the concerns of the movement, the location
of abortion or birth-control clinics, the rare attention paid to the restrictive costs of reproductive
health, etc. Ask students to conclude by suggesting ways that the problem they have studied
should be addressed in the current women’s health movement.
Ignoring Women in Modern Health Care: In order to explore how medicine today continues to
use the male body as the standard and to treat women’s health needs as less important, ask
students to research an aspect of the modern health-care system that is gendered. They should
describe their findings to the class and relate them to one or more readings. Suggested topics:
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
drugs and medical procedures being rarely tested on women;
the continuing ignorance of women’s experiences with heart disease and other illnesses
that are regularly associated with men but that also affect many women;
health insurance coverage of Viagra but not of birth control;
abortions or procedures to help women become pregnant rarely being covered by health
insurance.
The Medicalization of Women’s Bodies: This exercise will allow students to explore how
medicine has attempted to control women’s bodies in the United States. Ask students to research
both arguments regarding issues such as: PMS, menopause, caesarian births, hospital births
versus homebirths, higher rates of bariatric surgeries (or gastric bypasses) for women, or
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infertility. Ask them to describe whether the condition is seen as an existing problem and what
treatments/solutions are available.
Body Rituals: Ask students to list the ways that people work on their bodies, whether for
pleasure, for strength, or for social acceptability. (Start the list with things such as sports and
exercise, hair dye, makeup, cosmetic surgery, etc.) Ask students which of these body rituals are
more closely associated with males and which are more closely associated with females. After
sorting the body rituals into two separate lists, ask students how the male body rituals are
different from the female body rituals and what implications this has for women and men.
Media Portrayals of Women’s Bodies: This exercise is designed to have students think about the
media’s role in the social construction of women’s bodies. Ask students to explore the portrayal
of women’s bodies in advertising, film, or popular television programming. The paper should
explore what these images suggest about the ideal female body and how these images contribute
to poor body image for many women. Additionally, the paper should focus on how race, class,
and sexuality are portrayed. Students should look for the following:
(a)
(b)
(c)
How are women of color portrayed differently from white women (what aspects of their
bodies are focused on)?
When are the women shown large rather than thin?
Are women shown as strong or weak?
Explaining Eating Problems: Eating disorders are prevalent on most college campuses, and this
exercise is designed to aid students in the fight against this gendered problem. Invite a studenthealth nurse or someone from a local campaign against eating disorders to come to class and
discuss how eating disorders ravage women’s bodies and what signs to look for in oneself,
friends, or relatives. Ask this person to describe the possible causes of eating disorders and to
explain why more women than men are affected. Later, discuss what the guest lecturer had to
say in the context of what students learned from reading Becky Wangsgaard Thompson’s
reading.
Film on Body Image: Advertising images of women create a powerful context in which women
learn to equate the purchase of products with the possibility of being beautiful according to the
terms defined by the fashion industry. The documentary The Strength to Resist: Media's Impact
on Women and Girls can be shown in class to demonstrate the sexual objectification of women in
advertising, its affect on men and women, and people’s abilities to resist these influences. More
information on the film, including a curriculum guide can be found at:
http://www.cambridgedocumentaryfilms.org/Resist.html
Variety of genital surgeries: Simone Weil Davis (39 “Loose Lips Sink Ships”) explores the
expansion of cosmetic surgery into surgeries that are performed on women’s genitals and how
the Western surgeries are similar to African female genital cuttings, older practices of female
circumcisions in Western cultures, and surgeries performed on intersex children (described in
greater detail in Reading 7). Since Davis’s writings additional Western female genital surgeries
have gained in popularity such as revirgination where a hymen is repaired so that it could be retorn during sex. In addition, feminists have begun to explore the social construction of surgeries
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performed on male genitals like the commonly accepted practice of circumcision or more recent
penis enlargement surgeries. Explore these topics in greater detail during class by assigning
students to groups and asking each group to prepare a presentation for the class on one of these
surgeries. Ask them to explore the pros and cons of each surgery.
Web Links
AdiosBarbie
Satire can be the best medicine. Check out the AdiosBarbie website, which provides a cheeky
look at body issues. You can play “Feed the Model” just for fun!
http://www.adiosbarbie.com/
Alternative Medicines
Many Americans use some form of “alternative medicine”—from massage to St. John’s Wort to
using yogurt to treat yeast infections. Why might alternative medicine appeal especially to
women? Does alternative medicine pose risks to those who use it? Does it pose risks to the
profits of the pharmaceutical industry? Visit this National Institutes of Health website on
alternative medicine and think about these issues.
http://nccam.nih.gov/
Breast-Cancer Sites
Women’s breast health constitutes a major concern in women’s health care. Visit these sites to
explore the mainstream wisdom regarding breast health. Thinking about the criticisms of Barbara
Ehrenreich (41 “Welcome to Cancerland”), discover for yourself the atmosphere of these sites
and what is missing (such as information on causes of breast-cancer) from their discussion of the
disease.
Susan G. Komen for the Cure http://cms.komen.org/komen/index.htm
Breast Cancer Connections http://www.bcconnections.org/
BreastCancer.Org http://www.breastcancer.org/
Eating Disorders
Women in Western industrialized countries have suffered from an epidemic of eating disorders
over the last twenty years. Are anorexia and bulimia cultural, psychological, organic, or genetic?
Why do they afflict women more than men—and why are women on the verge of adolescence
most vulnerable? Explore these issues on-line through this website.
http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/p.asp?WebPage_ID=337
The Eugenics Movement
The eugenics movement in the United States resulted in the forced sterilization of both women
and men identified by physicians or social workers as “mentally defective,” insane, or
constitutionally undesirable. Between 1910 and 1940 the Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory, a
genetics research institute in the state of New York, housed the Eugenics Research Office which
was the central research facility of the American eugenics movement. Today this laboratory,
once closely affiliated with the eugenics research, displays an on-line archive of the eugenics
movement in order to demonstrate the pseudo-science and cultural prejudices involved in
eugenics.
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http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/
Feminist Women’s Health Care
The second wave of the feminist movement inspired the formation of women’s health centers
across the country. Such centers have provided women with education, support, and health care
from a perspective that supports a woman’s right to make her own decisions about sexuality,
reproduction, and allopathic and alternative medical approaches to treating medical problems.
The Feminist Women’s Health Center, which emerged from the women’s health movement,
continues to provide feminist-based medical care and education to women with clinics in several
locations and education available via the internet.
http://www.fwhc.org/
Forced Sterilization
Forced sterilization of minority women occurs in a number of places around the world. One
research report based on 230 in-depth interviews with Roma women in eastern Slovakia,
documented this atrocity in Eastern Europe. Additionally, the forced sterilization of Native
American and other women continues to be of major concern. Review the following websites to
learn more about the forced sterilization of minority and poor people.
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/1243
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/sterilize.html
http://againsttheirwill.journalnow.com/
http://www.sptimes.com/News/111101/Worldandnation/Human_weeds.shtml
The Long Battle to Include the Concerns of Women of Color in Reproductive Rights
Feminists of color have worked to include the topic of “forced sterilization” into the feminist
movement since the second-wave began. This site provides historical information on sterilization
of minority women and an early plea that the women’s movement should address this issue.
http://www.cwluherstory.com/CWLUArchive/cesa.html
National Organization to Halt the Abuse and Routine Mutilation of Males (NO HARMM)
This website explores in depth the common practice of male circumcision. NO HARMM is a
network that seeks to educate people about the risks of male genital surgeries and the social
construction of the normalcy of these surgeries. This network sees many similarities between
female genital operations and male circumcision and seeks to end both practices.
http://www.noharmm.org/home.htm
Organizations for Size/Fat Acceptance
A number of organizations are involved in a social movement to change societal attitudes
towards individuals who are thought to be above average size in contemporary Western societies.
These organizations challenge discrimination and prejudice against these people.
National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance
http://www.naafa.org/documents/brochures/naafa-info.html#whatis
International Size Acceptance Association http://www.size-acceptance.org/mission.html
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Our Bodies Our Selves
Our Bodies Our Selves has provided three generations of women with helpful, woman-centered
information and advice about bodies, health, and health care. Visit their website to find out more
about this feminist health-care institution.
http://www.ourbodiesourselves.org/
The Society for Women’s Health Research
Fausto- Sterling mentions this organization as in Reading 37 as an organization dedicated to
“gender-based medicine.” This organization takes part in lobbying, research, and advocacy
focused on improving women’s health.
http://www.womenshealthresearch.org/site/PageServer
The Strength to Resist: Media's Impact on Women and Girls
Advertising images of women create a powerful context in which women learn to equate the
purchase of products with the possibility of being beautiful according to the terms defined by the
fashion industry. The documentary The Strength to Resist: Media's Impact on Women and Girls
can be shown in class to demonstrate the sexual objectification of women in advertising, its
affect on men and women, and people’s abilities to resist these influences. More information on
the film, including a curriculum guide can be found at:
http://www.cambridgedocumentaryfilms.org/Resist.html
The Vagina Monologues
To say the word “vagina” aloud—privately or in public—still constitutes a radical act in many
places. Eve Ensler’s award-winning play The Vagina Monologues has helped to end the silence
and shame around women’s bodies and sexuality by speaking the previously unspeakable.
College campuses across the country have staged the show, which is based on hundreds of
“vagina interviews” with women in several countries. Visit this website to read about the
Monologues and learn how they have become a Valentine’s Day tradition across the globe.
http://www.vaginamonologues.com/index.html
Women and Heart Disease
Heart disease kills more women every year than all cancers combined, yet many women believe
that this is a “man’s” disease. Explore this site to get more information on how women can
prevent or reduce heart disease.
http://www.womenheart.org/
Women and HIV/AIDS
Women are vulnerable to HIV/AIDS infection and to misdiagnosis because the symptoms of
infection in women differ from those of HIV infection in men. Visit the website of The Body:
An AIDS and HIV Information Resource and find out more about women and HIV/AIDS.
http://www.thebody.com/whatis/women.shtml
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