Women, health and the environment

This paper develops a conceptual framework for gender-sensitive research and policy analysis that centres on women's interaction with the biophysical environment, and the implications of that interaction for their environmental health. The paper reviews the lack of data on women's non-reproductive health, and argues that there is a need for increased research and policy formulation dealing with women's environmental health in both the developing and the developed countries. One important dilemma for most researchers interested in women's environmental health is the lack of an appropriate conceptual model. The paper argues that attention to women's interaction with the biophysical environment within their own 'life spaces' reveals that women are exposed to the hazards of environmental illness in a manner that is clearly gender-differentiated. The paper reviews the impact of poverty, illiteracy and gender bias on women's life spaces, and argues that the failure to recognize and protect women's life spaces in economic policy and planning commonly leads to "disease environments" for women and their children. Evidence of the impact of such disease environments on women's environmental health is drawn from the urban setting and from women's experience of desertification in Africa and Asia. The paper reviews the policy issues that emerge from this analysis, and makes a series of suggestions for national and international policy and action in support of improvements in women's environmental health.