Feminist Centers Negotiating Medical Authority in the 21st Century: Implications for Feminist Care and the U.S. Women's Health Movement

Abstract

With an aim to investigate the recent state of the feminist clinics and their negotiation of medical authority in a time of increased technoscientific biomedicalization, and capitalistic health-care system, I conducted a study of two feminist health centers in the Northeast of the United States in 2001–2002. In this chapter, I discuss how the two centers (a nonprofit collective and a for-profit center with a more hierarchical structure) negotiated medical authority in organizational terms as impacted by the larger context of medicine and its interaction with the state, capitalist health-care system, and antiabortion forces. The chapter concludes with a discussion of demedicalization as a multilevel process and implications for feminist care (service delivery) and U.S. Women's Health Movement.

Citation

Dayi, A. (2011), "Feminist Centers Negotiating Medical Authority in the 21st Century: Implications for Feminist Care and the U.S. Women's Health Movement", Jacobs Kronenfeld, J. (Ed.) Access to Care and Factors that Impact Access, Patients as Partners in Care and Changing Roles of Health Providers (Research in the Sociology of Health Care, Vol. 29), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 197-228. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0275-4959(2011)0000029011