I must say that as a Women's Health major, I was not as surprised as everybody else about the injustices concerning these articles. The one I guess I'll address is the one concerning the contemporary cell biology. I really do not get how people do not expect the same gender bias within the science world, it is one of the reasons why there are so many health disparities today, specially among black females. The article talked about how females were "incomplete males." It was just a reflection of any other male dominated ideology in my opinion. I hear feminist continuously talking about "taking back history" or "herstory." Why do people think that this stops within the historical contexts of life? Biology and science affects not only our history, but our physical well beings. This is exactly why classes like "biology of women" are needed, so that we can get a better grasp of our physical bodies, and understanding for why we are undervalued as females, specially black females. The article talked about the act of fertilization, and it just reminded me of how males think they are the true gift to women, being able to create life. When in reality, sperm is basic, and the vagina is acidic, procreation doesn't even make sense without the women. The sperm slowly dies off as it travels through the uterus, decreasing the number of sperm dramatically. If it wasn't for the design of the female body, and the aid of it's aromas/egg, the sperm would never even make it to the egg. I think the reeducation of the female anatomy is strongly needed. If anybody is interested in more reading about the charge for a more diverse strategy for research, I read this article last semester that was really interesting.
The article “Intersectional and Women’s Health: Charting a Path to Eliminating Health Disparities” discusses the need for change within the world of women’s health. This article asks for a serious reeducation of the processes researchers use towards data used in case studies. Weber and Parra-Medina explain this by saying scholars need to “[expand their] knowledge of health disparities and of identifying new ways of going about eliminating the persistent and pervasive social inequalities of race, class, gender, and sexuality as well as the health disparities”, ( 2003).The authors suggest that the process in which people gather information and the subjects that they discuss are merely skimming the surface of these health disparities.
The authors clarify this saying that to “understand the health disparities it requires that we examine the broader social, cultural, economic and political processes of social inequality that control or influence the nature and extent of disparities” (Weber et al., 2003). This means that we would have to take our level of examinations to include more dimensions, to be able to include other factors like race, class and gender as factors contributing to large health disparities. These ideas about more inclusion in the world of health would not only benefit health outcomes, but the percentage of black women are affected. If these factors are included address the situation, changes in our social and physical well being could be improved.
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The article that you've read is very helpful in expanding our discussion of biases beyond the realm of sex and gender. Science has had a lot to do with how many marginalized groups are viewed in society. As science searches for a "gay" and "fat" gene it become more clear how social factors influence both the questions scientists ask and the answers they find.
I feel as though many Westernized countries especially try to use science as a justification for why we choose to discriminate against people. If you can scientifically prove that somebody is different, does that not sort of justify the treatment of somebody? Scientist have tried searching for biological explanations for why blacks are dying faster than any other race, specially black females. Mostly the answers are unknown, but it can be seen that blacks do not respond to medication as well as whites. Majority of theses differences are based on a lack of communication between blacks and whites, as well as a lack of black test subjects.
It can be seen that after the tuskeegee(sp) experiments, there has been a very large mistrust for medicines and science. I feel as though these differences, and exclusion of blacks, gays, and transexuals from the medical world that makes these scientific justifications fickle. How can these scientific explanations encompass sub groups like blacks, gays, females, or transexuals, when their basis of their experiments are usually white males? The charge for a wider inclusion of more variety of subjects would at least make their findings less bias.
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