"Women have always been healers. They were the unlicensed doctors and anatomists of western history. They were abortionists, nurses and counselors. They were pharmacists, cultivating healing herbs and exchanging the secrets of their uses. They were midwives, travelling from home to home and village to village. For centuries women were doctors without degrees, barred from books and lectures, learning from each other and passing on experience from neighbor to neighbor and mother to daughter. They were called "wise women" by the people, witches or charlatans by the authorities. Medicine is part of our heritage as women, our history, our birthright." —Barbara Ehrenreich and Deidre English, Witches, Midwives and Nurses. New York; The Feminist Press, 1973.
Women have been robbed of their role in medicine. Eight million of them were burned at the stake as witches, and medical science became one of the bastions of patriarchy. But today's feminists are regaining this history and this legacy, as the strength and breadth of the women's health movement demonstrates.
In the past decade, the women's movement has organized four international conferences on Women and Health; the first in Rome in 1977, the second in Germany in 1980, the third in Geneva in 1981 and the fourth in Amsterdam in 1984. We Latin American women held our First Regional Meeting on Women's Health in Colombia in 1984, while national and provincial meetings have been organized in many countries.
For feminists, health embraces all aspects of life and not merely the treatment and prevention of illness. The right to health goes further than the curing of illness. It implies the physical, emotional and mental well-being of individuals. Health influences and is conditioned by all aspects of our lives, from the type of housing we have to the type of work we do. Health is ensured by food, education, housing and work. That is to say, health cannot be separated from the political, economic and cultural systems of our societies, and so cannot be conceived of as detached from our role as women in society.
The women's health movement arises directly from the awakening of feminism in the past two decades, that is, from women's growing awareness that problems considered personal and individual are, in reality, political issues.
As we examine our lives, we also begin to analyze social structures that oppress us; education, law and the church. We begin to question them and to organize action to halt this oppression.
One of the areas we are questioning is the medical system. We are beginning to demystify gynecology through the work of self-care and self-help groups, which began to be organized in the 1970s in the United States and have now spread all over the world. In Latin America, for instance, Puerto Rico's Taller de Salud (Health Workshop), and various health groups in Brazil are doing this work. The initial aim of these groups was to break away from the traditional doctor-patient relationship of the established medical system and regain control of our bodies, which had been taken over by the medical profession.
Psychiatry is also being challenged. Women are realizing that reaction to oppression is defined as mental illness in our societies. Women are questioning population control as the principal motive behind the research and development of new high-technology contraceptive methods, rather than birth control or the reproductive rights of women. Feminist research carried out on the pill and intrauterine devices shed light on the dangers of their use, and women are demanding to be informed of the risks. Feminists are denouncing the use of women as guinea pigs for research on high-technology birth control, and protesting the use of these methods, along with the sterilization of women, by many governments as methods of population control, sometimes as a condition for receiving economic aid from the United States.
In recent years, feminists have been earring out research on the new reproductive technologies, which pose an enormous challenge to humanity. Controlled by patriarchal doctors, scientists and technicians, these could be transformed into another weapon for the domination of women's bodies. Women are attempting to enter this field of new knowledge.
In the field of pharmaceuticals, women are organizing campaigns against dangerous drugs such as depo-provera and against the policies of the industry, which obey the laws of profit and the market and influence the definition of health services in terms of drugs and remedial medical attention, instead of considering the activities and situations that actually lead to illness.
Other fundamental concerns of women in the field of health are nutrition, hygiene, mental health, work overload, inadequate and often highly dangerous working conditions, pregnancy, birth, sexuality, prostitution, violence against women, and alternative medicine. Women have been active in all these fields, investigating, publicizing, bringing awareness to other women, searching for new solutions to their own and their families' health problems.
A marvelous example of women's work in this area is Our Bodies, Ourselves by the Boston Women's Health Book Collective, which has been translated into many languages and has served as a guide and example to women all over the world. The Collective has broadened its work, and The New Our Bodies, Ourselves has now been published, with new material and a deepening knowledge of women's health.
The aim of the women's health movement is not only to recover knowledge, to denounce the expropriation of and control over our bodies, but also to participate actively in the formulation and implementation of health policies. In many countries, it has made inroads in showing new ways to approach women's health.
The bulk of this issue of the Isis International Women's Journal tries to show the wealth of this movement through recounting the experiences of Brazilian women. The women's health movement in Brazil is highly developed on a national scale. Its strength was shown at the First National Meeting on Women's Health held in Sao Paulo in November 1984, attended by seventy groups from all over the country. The "Itapecirica Letter," the final document of the meeting, is reprinted here. This issue gives an account of the development of the ideas and action of the Brazilian women's health movement, its influence in the formulation and its participation in the implementation of PAISM, the government's women's health programme, at the national and state level. Brazilian feminists are participating in the government health programmes while at the same time remaining critical of them, for while these these incorporate some of their demands, they by no means include all of their thinking and visions on women and health.
For this reason women are holding monthly open forums in some places, such as in the region of Sao Paulo, in which they discuss all the aspects of the programmes with representatives of the Health Secretariat. In this way, they are keeping a watch on the implementation of the Programme.
This issue also gives an idea of feminist thought and research in the area of health in different parts of the world. Additional articles discuss natural healing in Chile, the global pharmaceuticals industry, and health hazards to women electronics workers; a statement from women in Bhopal, India is also included. The Resources section gives information about the groups, centers and institutions that are working on women's health in Latin America, in addition to information about international health networks and international and national women's health campaigns and publications on women's health.
This issue of the Isis International Women's Journal is the result of a joint effort between the women of the Sexuality and Health Collective of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and ourselves. The English edition has been prepared by the Isis International office in Rome.
The Isis International Collective
Santiago, Chile