I am out of the office until the 6th June.
I will reply to you as soon as I can when I get back.
If it is an emergency please call the CISHE office on 029 2087 9609
Many thanks
Eva Elliott
>>> SDOH 05/28/05 13:43 >>>
"OBOS also highlighted that women's health was more than just boobs and
babies. The collective made sure to include a wide range of women's health
experiences understood in cultural and emotional terms. They also drew on
social determinants of health, such as the ways in which violence, poverty,
gender, ethnicity and other social, occupational and environmental factors
combine to influence health status."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20050528/BKOBOS28/TPEntertainment/Email
Globe and Mail
The mother of all women's health guides
By KATHLEEN O'GRADY
Saturday, May 28, 2005 Page D11
Our Bodies, Ourselves:
A New Edition for a New Era
Boston Women's Health
Book Collective
Simon & Schuster,
832 pages, $34.50
It has been 35 years since the publication of the first edition of Our
Bodies, Ourselves (OBOS), a comprehensive women's health book that sparked
a movement and changed the way health educators would teach the facts of
life, and more, to new generations of girls and women.
OBOS has since been through numerous revisions and editions, been
translated into 18 languages, including Braille, and sold more than four
million copies worldwide; it has never gone out of print. Adaptations of
OBOS have been launched in such diverse places as Bulgaria, Poland, Serbia,
Senegal, South Korea, Moldova and Latin America (there are no plans for a
Canadian edition).
OBOS could safely, and without exaggeration, be called the Bible of the
women's health movement in North America for many in the 1970s, '80s and
into the '90s, when it finally encountered some competition from other
comprehensive women's health resources that adopted the OBOS model.
I remember well, in my early 20s, borrowing a well-thumbed copy of OBOS
from a friend, who had, in turn, borrowed hers from a friend. I finally
broke down and bought my own copy a few years later, lent it out regularly
for a decade -- and when I was no longer university-poor, bought copies for
each of my sisters, my mother and my closest friends and colleagues for
their birthdays. I wasn't just a fan, I was a convert.
But this is how OBOS got around back then: There were no ads, the
mainstream press largely ignored it, and yet it became a slow, steady
phenomenon and a staple for every woman who wanted to know, with
unapologetic pride and confidence, all there is to know about the workings
of her body.
OBOS began in the 1970s as a collective project by a dozen U.S. feminist
educators who felt that women's health literature needed to be accessible,
balanced and independent, to include the voices and experiences of women,
and to challenge the health disciplines to better serve the needs and
concerns of women. They called themselves the Boston Women's Health Book
Collective.
OBOS was revolutionary then -- and changed the tenor and tone of many
health books to come -- because it dispensed with the weighty technical
jargon and cold diagrams popular with health textbooks and puberty primers
of the time. The "need to know" facts were there, but the voices and
experiences of women were validated in what was at the time a new
pedagogical model of teaching health through personal narratives.
OBOS also highlighted that women's health was more than just boobs and
babies. The collective made sure to include a wide range of women's health
experiences understood in cultural and emotional terms. They also drew on
social determinants of health, such as the ways in which violence, poverty,
gender, ethnicity and other social, occupational and environmental factors
combine to influence health status.
Now, at long last, there is a completely reworked edition for the 21st
century. And just in time, because as important as OBOS was in its
formative decades, it had started to become more than a little out of
fashion for our sex-savvy and cynical postmodern, postfeminist, postpierced
era. The "new age" feminist sentiments and the dusty-looking hippie photos
that permeated the previous editions stale-dated the content for many young
readers, yet the women's health information it contained was as pertinent
as ever.
With this latest edition, the text has been completely overhauled and
updated, many new chapters have been added, and the photos, layout and
design have been redone with a contemporary aesthetic. There is also a
(free) companion website (http://www.ourbodiesourselves.org) to supplement
the more than 800 pages of women's health information in the book.
Health topics include the essentials on body image, violence and abuse,
safe sex, birth control, abortion, childbearing and parenting, among many
other topics, but there is also an added emphasis on new reproductive
technologies, healthy aging, HIV/AIDS, environmental health and sexual
orientation, which marks this edition as timely and current.
The Boston Women's Health Book Collective, with some original members,
continues to oversee the content of OBOS, book and website, with an
editorial team. For this edition they also involved more than 500 advisers,
writers, editors and reviewers from across North America.
You don't often see the "f" word (feminism) in this new volume, though it
still clearly informs the content. Implicit throughout the health
information is a critical assessment of the increasing medicalization of
women's bodies. Some examples: health trends to make menopause a sickness
instead of a natural stage of life; troubling increases in unnecessary
hysterectomy; and concerns about elective C-sections. The editors are
careful to present the debate around these issues with nuance, balance and
lots of evidence.
Gender analyses also help to highlight the inequities in health research
(what and who receives the coveted research dollars; lack of women in
clinical trials), health care (the bulk of paid and unpaid homecare workers
are women) and health policy (few women in the policy and political arena).
Different from previous editions, this new version is much more diverse
with the kinds of women it represents in voice and picture: Different ages
and ethnicities are there, but equally important, different "social types"
are present: punks, dykes, soccer moms, fashionistas, power suits and
jocks. The effect is not one of tokenism, but a representative swath of
women from any city in North America. This, along with the book's new.
slimmer size and design, make it look younger, hipper and more worldly than
its previous incarnations.
Just as it did in 1970, when it first appeared, OBOS has set the gold
standard for women's health information. There is still no other book that
has as much depth, span and insight, in as clear and uninhibited fashion,
and with an independent voice, on women's health issues. OBOS, 35 years on,
has aged beautifully.
Kathleen O'Grady is a research associate at the Simone de Beauvoir
Institute, Concordia University, and the director of communications for the
Canadian Women's Health Network. (She served as a reader for two chapters
in the new OBOS.)
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