Healthsharing Reader

The evidence of experts is here given the same weight as the evidence of uneducated women. The key is "learning from each other", health workers learning from patients, patients learning about health workers, women learning from women. This volume features the words of ordinary women appearing beside the findings of health professionals. Here the daily truths of women's lives meet the realities of today's health system, women's ways of knowing and learning meet the information of medical science, personal experience meets political and economic analysis. Like pieces of a jigsaw, when fitted together these accounts form a picture of women's health. Among the many messages these essays deliver is that women are less and less willing to relinquish control over their own bodies; the reward for those who read this book is encouragement to learn more, and thus more directly to influence their own health. For this book is not about women as victims: 'If, as women, we had relinquished control over our bodies and our lives, these stories would not have been told. Many of them are tributes to the courage and persistence of women, and the book celebrates women's understanding and action.'
In this book, women speak to each other, directly and straightforwardly, about things that matter. Because the majority of those seeking assistance for their health are women, it will be invaluable reading for all health professionals. Health Sharing Women are a group of workers and staff from the Women's Health Information Service in Melbourne. This book is intended for students and researchers in women's health.