WOMEN, HEALTH AND HEALTH PROFESSIONS: HISTORIOGRAPHICAL REVIEW AND CASE STUDIES IN CONTEMPORARY SPANISH HEALTH SYSTEM

Abstract

The historical reconstruction of health practices of women, taking the Spanish case as a testing ground and model of analysis, is one of the basic guideliness of this paper. Based on an important amount of empirical studies, focusing in particular in the area of nursing, we can have an overall picture of the health work of women in the geographic space and time of our work and thus, answer a series of questions in which the expert, the experience, authority and professional legitimation are omnipresent. The second of the aspects addressed is that of women as a patients and users of health practices. So-called “diseases of women”, as chlorosis and neurasthenia and the historical meaning of the role of women in health campaigns and health education programs, are all examples to reveal discourses full of traditional ideological features despite its apparent veneer of modernity. As the main conclusions, we must highlight the importance reached in androcentric discourses on issues concerning health and women globally, or the more specific as the fertility cult to justify different and complementary social tasks of a man, besides pointing out the desirability of exploring new paths to follow from both thematically and in terms of the heuristic tools.