IRW Distinguished Lecture Series 2022-2023
Care
2006-2007 Speaker Seth Koven
Seth Koven is the author of Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London (Princeton 2004) and co-editor with Sonya Michel of Mothers of a New World, Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States (Routledge 1993).
He is currently writing a history of the radical left in 20th century Britian through a study of six anti-imperialist pacifists who renounced their wealth and embraced voluntary poverty in their quest to reconcile rich and poor, east and west, black and white, men and women.
Dr. Koven's talk will explore the centrality of the body in his subjects' understandings of spirituality and global justice while telling their life stories through their experiments with a wide range of counter-culture body, diet, prayer and health regimes.
2006-2007 Speaker Alina Salganicoff
Alina Salganicoff
Vice President and Director, Women’s Health Care Policy
Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation
Short Bio, now available at KaiserEDU.org
Women's Health Policy page at the Kaiser Family Foundation
NPR interview with Jennifer Ludden, "High Costs Undermine Women's Health" (listen online)
Lecture Summary:
“Beyond the Pap Smear: Health Policy Through a Women’s Lens”
The Institute for Research on Women’s 2006-2007 Distinguished Lecture Series on Health and Bodies began October 5 with a talk by Dr. Alina Salganicoff, Vice President and Director of Women’s Health Policy at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. In “Beyond the Pap Smear: Health Policy Through a Women’s Lens,” Dr. Salganicoff summarized findings of the Kaiser Family Foundation’s 2004 Women’s Health Survey and discussed its policy implications.
In 2004 the Kaiser Family Foundation expanded its path-breaking 2001 survey of women and health to further explore women’s challenges and interactions with the health care system. The revised survey addressed affordability issues, preventive care and provider counseling, extent of prescription drug use, and use of reproductive health services, as well as the health experiences of menopausal women and women over age 65.
The findings are based on a nationally representative sample of 2,766 women ages 18 and older that were interviewed by telephone in the summer and fall of 2004. This survey presents an overview and profile of women’s health coverage and contributes the latest data on fundamental issues concerning women’s health policy that includes women’s demographics, health status, the impact of health care costs on women’s access to care and prescription drugs, the impact that the responsibility for overseeing the health care of their families has on their health and well-being, and the changes that occurred between the 2001 and 2004 women’s health surveys. Survey findings summarize the health status and insurance coverage of women of different ages, incomes, races and ethnicities.
Analyzing this data promotes a better understanding of many of the challenges that are affecting the different subgroups of women. Dr. Salganicoff’s lecture focused on these findings to discuss why women need health care, why they are underinsured, and why their access and needs are different from men. Dr. Salganicoff cited the 2004 Survey to illustrate that income, education, and employment are all associated with health status, insurance coverage, and access to care. Since only half of all women complete a high school education, many women will likely experience socioeconomic disadvantage. Women are more likely than men to be live on low incomes. Low-income women are more likely to experience a range of chronic health problems. They thus have greater health care needs than most men and than women with higher incomes.
Although job-based coverage is the primary source of insurance for non-elderly women, only 41% of the women reported that they worked full time. About a third of all non-elderly women with health insurance (35%) had coverage through their own employer; another 29% received insurance as a dependent through family coverage. Women who are young, single, working part-time or unemployed are at the highest risk for being uninsured as a result of their lower incomes and lack of access to employment-based coverage.
Because women’s lifespans are longer than men’s, women are more likely to have health problems as they age. Furthermore, since many women access health care coverage through employee benefits provided to their husbands, divorce or the death of their partners means their coverage is terminated.
Women of color are more likely than white women or men of color to work in low-wage jobs, have disproportionately lower incomes, and are less likely to be offered coverage by their employers. Among all women, Latinas are the least likely to have insurance and have a much lower rate of employer-sponsored coverage rate. Similarly, African American women also have a low employer-sponsored coverage rate and higher rates of Medicaid coverage than white women.
Women also access the health care system differently than their male counterparts. About half of all women visit an ob-gyn annually and overall more women than men visit their health care providers each year. However, many women report that they do not have the time to receive medical care due to their job and child care responsibilities.
Women’s higher incidence of chronic health problems and lifetime need for reproductive health services reinforces their unique relationship to the health care system. The division between reproductive health and other health needs that often require the use of multiple providers can create fragmented health care for women.
In creating national health policies, policymakers must take into account that women have different health care needs and exhibit different patterns for accessing the health system than men, are more likely to develop a chronic illness or condition as they age, are less likely to have employer-sponsored health care and are more likely to be a dependent on someone else’s policy, and are less likely to seek medical care due to their familial and job responsibilities.
For more information about the Kaiser Family Foundation’s 2004 Women’s Health Survey please visit the Foundation’s website at www.kff.org.
2008-2009 Speaker Karima Bennoune
"Toward a More 'Courageous Politics': Talking About Muslim Fundamentalism in the Human Rights Framework "
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Karima Bennoune, J.D. is a Professor of Law and Arthur L. Dickson Scholar at Rutgers School of Law-Newark and a Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan Law School. She teaches international law and human rights, also incorporating her research and advocacy interests concerning terrorism, armed conflict, women's rights, and religious extremism into her work. Prior to beginning her academic career, she served as a legal adviser for Amnesty International in London for four years, working on issues including torture and human rights in armed conflict. Bennoune was a member of the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law. She served on the Board of Directors of Amnesty International-USA and was appointed to the Board of Trustees of the Center for Constitutional Rights. She has participated in a human rights mission to Afghanistan, and in 2007 received the Derrick A. Bell Jr. Award from the Section on Minority Groups of the Association of American Law Schools. Her writing has appeared in numerous journals, including the European Journal of International Law and the Michigan Journal of International Law.
Abstract:
Feminist international lawyers Christine Chinkin and Hilary Charlesworth have argued that religious fundamentalisms are among the most significant challenges to women’s human rights in the contemporary moment. These fundamentalist movements and their adherents often claim to speak for and in the name of culture, religion, tradition, raising particular challenges for women’s human rights. There is no question that addressing the issue of Muslim fundamentalism in the U.S. in the contemporary moment is incredibly difficult and requires one to tightrope walk over perilous waters, making use of a vocabulary heavily laden with unfortunate political meaning. However, as Chetan Bhatt has noted in the context of the United Kingdom, “generally . . . multiracial feminism has been virtually alone in creating an activist political challenge to fundamentalism.” Thus, to understand the complexities of mediating what are sometimes named the claims of culture and religion on women’s human rights today, we must pay attention to people like the feminist advocates Bhatt references and their human rights based opposition to fundamentalism.
Ruth Dill Johnson Crockett Building
162 Ryders Lane, Douglass Campus
Reception at 4, Lecture at 4:30 p.m.
2008-2009 Speaker Uma Narayan
"Suspicious Centerings: Third World Women, the Rhetoric of Rights and the Politics of Rescue and Empowerment"
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Uma Narayan is the Andrew W. Mellon Chair of the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy at Vassar College. She is the author of Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions and Third World Women and has co-edited several feminist anthologies. She is now working on a book that addresses various problematic economic aspects of contemporary globalization.
Abstract:
The feminist injunction to put the problems of poor and marginalized women at the center of analysis has been arguably co-opted by some disturbing contemporary agendas, and such agendas will be the focus of Professor Narayan's talk. Professor Narayan will examine two distinct phenomena-- the movements in various countries to "rescue" Muslim women from the veil and the enthusiasm for economically empowering Third World women through microcredit. She will talk about how the rhetoric of rights functions to obscure various deeply problematic aspects of these "suspicious centerings."
Location:
Ruth Dill Johnson Crockett Building
162 Ryders Lane, Douglass Campus
Reception at 4:00
Lecture at 4:30