Gender Politics in the ‘New’ NHS

Abstract

In this chapter I am concerned with examining gender equality in the context of the reform and restructuring of health care in the UK and, in particular, in the reconfiguration of community and primary health services into Primary Care Groups (PCGs). The introduction of these new structures for the management and delivery of primary health care have been hailed as the biggest ‘shake-up’ in the UK National Health Service (NHS) for fifty years (Guardian, 1 July 1998). So far massive upheaval is not much in evidence but certainly PCGs are regarded as a crucial element in the Labour government’s agenda for a ‘new’ and ‘modernised’ NHS. Locally determined and managed health care is to be achieved through new and extended forms of professional collaboration between health care workers, such as doctors and nurses, and across health and social care agencies in a given locality. As a policy agenda committed to social inclusion, user participation and equality in health care standards, there is much here that is potentially very attractive to those working for gender and ‘race’ equality in the organisation of health care.