The modern medical system is largely based on the curative rather than the preventive and the holistic ethic. With its emphasis on the more expensive and invasive chemical therapies, and super-specialisation  equipment-dependent diagnosis and care it has overrun all other forms of health-care. This has led to the marginalisation of women in the sphere of health, even though women are traditionally the healers in most societies. Feminists have also shown how these trends have lead to the female body itself being “under seige”.

In fact, today women have less access to formal health care systems, as is seen by any disaggregated statistics on health.(1) A look at the gender-related health index released by the Government of Karnataka (See table on Page 80) is indicative of this rampant bias against women, both in the health care system and in society in general. Neglect, low status and priority, and the increasing costs of health care are the main reasons for such a situation.

Women’s groups and other health activists have emphasised that about 80% of illness in the Third World can be prevented by better nutrition, water supply, sanitation, immunisation and preventive health education.

The modern medical system has also undermined folk medicine, which is a cumulative knowledge base accessible to women. In an attempt to revive traditional health care systems and raise awareness on health issues, various groups like Chetna (Ahmedabad), Shakti, and Kishore Bharati (Madhya Pradesh) along with health activist networks like Shodini started several initiatives.(2)(3) The attempt is  to regain the power and control that is lost. Other organisations have done pioneering work on preservation and propagation of folk medicines (FRLHT), documentation and exchange of traditional knowledges (ADS), as also the development of indigenous systems of medicine like Ayurveda and Unnani. These along with fora like the Traditional Science Congress serve to strenghten and advance these bodies of knowledge and systems of healing used by male and female practitioners.

Such knowledges have long been dismissed as unscientific, even as MNCs today rush to patent the very ingredients that have been used by women, as home-remedies, for centuries

Women are also subject to varied forms of occupational and environmental hazards – higher levels of lead-poisoning among young women working in the electronics industry, alarmingly high incidence of lung ailments among beedi-workers, persistent menstrual problems among women in the pharmaceutical sector etc.(4)

Women’s groups have been the first to oppose the mere “wombs and tubes” notion of women’s health, and have been involved, along with the other movements for a holistic and gender sensitive approach to health and health care. Some of the major struggles in recent times, have been fought on this front, i.e. on  reproductive health.

Contraceptives and Reproductive Choice
The issue of contraception has been double-edged for women. For though it offers greater sexual and reproductive freedom, it also represents systemic violence against the woman’s body.

From the late seventies, the women’s movement has steadfastly opposed patriachial approaches to social health issues. For example they came out quite forcefully against the forced sterilisation campaign and also the basic approach of “targeting” the women, which essentially passed the responsibility and onus of action on the women. The focus of reproductive research too has been on producing easy-to-administer and long-acting contraceptives and such contraceptives go along well with mass campaigns and family planning drives.

Feminists, on the other hand, called for technologies as well as programmes which would increase the choice and “self-determination” of women in this field. This would entail education of women, as well as motivating the men to bear some of the responsibility.

However, under the guise of expanding “choice”, the state sponsored family planning (now called family welfare) programmes; and the drug establishment sponsored research on “new reproductive technologies”. They have introduced and tested several hormonal contraceptives that have proved to be harmful to women’s health. So we had masses of perfectly healthy women, who, in order to achieve a social/economic goal, were being told that they must accept side-effects as being “minor discomforts”. Currently there is a massive “public (dis)service” advertising campaign, using TV personalities to testify that their personal experience says that the side-effects will wear off. The personality confides that “to gain something, you have to lose something”.

Another example where women were considered dispensable at the altar of programmes meant for their own “welfare”, was the testing of long-acting contraceptives. Several women were used as guinea pigs without full and proper disclosure of the consequences of such contraceptives. Further the injectable NET-EN and the implant NORPLANT were introduced without proper clinical trials(5)(6). Research is also on into RU 486, the abortion pill. Numerous studies indicate that these technologies are unsafe and carcinogenic, and are being tested on poor, third world and minority women the world over, including India.

Another scandal that came to light was the covert promotion of quinacrine, a malarial drug, as a non-surgical method of sterilisation, when in fact sterility was a side-effect of the anti-malarial drug.(7) The Women’s movement has put up a stiff resistance to these moves, and continue to battle for making reproductive and sexual health a reality for all women, in all contexts and situations.

The patriarchal politics that contraception represents, assumes new significance given the rising incidence of HIV in the country. Whether or not HIV is the main cause of AIDS or it is the high incidence of preventable illness like TB, STD, and low body resistance, the male reluctance to use condoms or take responsibility for infection-spreading, have now led to a spurt of research in barrier contraceptive for use by women.