GENDER AND PUBLIC HEALTH: DISPARITIES,

This seminar provides an intensive introduction to critical thinking about gender in relation to public health. We begin with an introduction to social scientific approaches to thinking about gender in relation to health, as well as an introduction to public health as a field, and then examine diverse areas in which gendered relations of power – primarily between men and women, but also between cis- and queer individuals – shape health behaviors and health outcomes. Over the course of the semester, we engage with multiple examples of how gendered social processes, in combination with other dimensions of social stratification, shape health at the population level. Through reading, discussion, and critical analysis, the overarching goal is to help students learn to think about gender – and, by extension, about any form of social stratification – in relation to the health of populations, as opposed to individuals.We also examine how public health as a field is itself a domain in which gender is reproduced or contested.

Given the enormous range of outcomes and disparities on which such a class might focus, it is impossible to examine every possible gendered pattern of population health. We will focus on four (sometimes overlapping) broad areas of work in public health: child survival, sexual and reproductive health, violence, and substance use.

Aspiring clinicians should note that our focus is not on gender in the context of health care; although we do touch on health care and gender at points over the course of the semester, our overall orientation is towards health behaviors and the social determinants of health.