Discrimination
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: Activities of daily living, Americans with Disabilities Act, Capacity, Health insurance, Social Security disability benefits
Suggested Reading Asch, A., & Fine, M. (Eds.). (1988). Women with disabilities: Essays in psychology, culture and politics. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Beisser, A. (1988). Flying without wings: Personal reflections on loss, disability, and healing. New York: Bantam Books. Jans, L., & Stoddard, S. (1999). Chartbook on women and disability in the United States. An InfoUse Report. Washington, DC: U.S. National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research. Mathews, G. F. (1983). Voices from the shadows: Women with disabilities speak out. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Women’s Educational Press. National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). (2001). Women hold up half the sky, fact sheet on women and mental health research (NIH Publication No. 01-4607). Betlesda, MD: Author.
JANET L. LOWDER MARY B. MCKEE
Discrimination Women face discrimination on a variety of fronts in health today ranging from the battle to include contraceptives in basic health plans, to biases inherent in the male-dominated medical establishment. This has created an atmosphere of growing resentment that has spawned a campaign toward a better understanding of the critical issues women face when making medical choices. Identifying and drawing attention to the problem areas is the first step to overcoming gender bias in medicine. Sexism in research, insurance, diagnosis, and treatment has created a situation where women make uninformed decisions, receive inferior care, and in some instances endure downright neglect. One of the most difficult and troubling examples of sexism is in medical research. Women are often excluded from participating in research into new drugs, medical treatments, and new surgical techniques. There is a widespread practice in the medical community of using exclusively male subjects in the study of disease. The raw data garnered from these studies are then “interpreted” to include women. Using males as experimental subject not only ignores the fact that females may respond differently to the drugs and mechanisms tested, but may ironically lead to less accurate models even in the male. One glaring example of this can be found in the study of heart disease. Physicians consider research
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Discrimination into heart disease as primarily addressing men; it is considered applicable to older women only. This is despite the fact that the incidence of heart disease has steadily increased among women since at least the 1950s. Research has also provided one of the most frightening instances of the total disregard by the medical establishment of women’s unique vulnerabilities while pregnant. From the early 1940s till 1971, obstetricians prescribed the drug known as diethylstilbestrol (DES) to pregnant women who were suspected of being prone to miscarriages. Some women, who took the drug experimentally, were not told the truth about what they were taking and were instead told that they were taking a vit
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