Reflections on the future of women's health research in a comparative context why more than sex and gender matters.

摘要

Women's health research in both the United States and Canada has made much progress over the last 20 years. Traditional conceptions of women's health that focused on women as reproductive beings have been replaced with an increased recognition of the importance and multifaceted effects of sex and gender on all aspects of health. Although more recent work acknowledges diversity among women, social and health inequities continue, especially among the most marginalized and vulnerable populations of women (Hankivsky, 2007). We argue that the persistence of such inequities demand a critical analysis of the current state of women's health research. In particular, the time has come to re-engage the American-Canadian scientific dialogue on dominant research practices in each jurisdiction that are not conceptually robust around issues of sex and gender, persisting to analytically prioritize sex and gender as separate from other social, environmental, and political factors that affect health.