GENDER, EMBODIMENT, AND DISEASE: Environmental Breast Cancer Activists' Challenges to Science, the Biomedical Model, and Policy

摘要

As developed and developing societies increasingly alter their natural environments by introducing chemical and other industrial by-products, disease-based social movements aiming to link various diseases to environmental causes are becoming more common. The burden of scientific proof, among other factors, poses a significant challenge to these movements. We illustrate how gender identity serves both to constrain and enable activists in the environmental breast cancer movement (EBCM). We highlight how the EBCM's attempt to emphasize possible environmental causes of breast cancer forces the movement to challenge the medical and popular explanations of breast cancer—what we call the dominant epidemiological paradigm—that point to personal lifestyle and genetics. The concept of the dominant epidemiological paradigm provides an analytical framework for exploring how gender concerns are central to environmental breast cancer activists' efforts to link breast cancer to environmental causes. It also provides a framework to see how gender discrimination gets institutionalized, and how activists respond to that institutionalized discrimination by employing tactics that often centre on gender-based issues.