Gender, embodiment, and disease: Environmental breast cancer activists' challenges to science, the biomedical model, and policy

Abstract

STEPHEN ZAVESTOSKI, SABRINA McCORMICK ANDPHIL BROWNAs developed and developing societies increasingly alter their naturalenvironments by introducing chemical and other industrial by-prod-ucts, disease-based social movements aiming to link various diseasesto environmental causes are becoming more common. The burdenof scientific proof, among other factors, poses a significant challengeto these movements. We illustrate how gender identity serves both toconstrain and enable activists in the environmental breast cancermovement (EBCM). We highlight how the EBCM’s attempt toemphasize possible environmental causes of breast cancer forces themovement to challenge the medical and popular explanations ofbreast cancer—what we call the dominant epidemiologicalparadigm—that point to personal lifestyle and genetics. The conceptof the dominant epidemiological paradigm provides an analyticalframework for exploring how gender concerns are central to environ-mental breast cancer activists’ efforts to link breast cancer to en-vironmental causes. It also provides a framework to see how genderdiscrimination gets institutionalized, and how activists respond tothat institutionalized discrimination by employing tactics that oftencentre on gender-based issues.The dominant epidemiological paradigm of breast cancer, whichis largely supported by the mainstream breast cancer movement,focuses on individual-level approaches to stopping breast cancer.