Implications For Women Research Articles

Covering Controversy: What Are the Implications for Women's Health?

We see it while skimming newspaper headlines, watching the nightly news, and, increasingly, scanning our social media feeds: high volumes of conflicting and controversial information about issues relevant to women’s health. Already in 2015, several such controversial issues have occupied media attention, including conflict over childhood vaccination decisions after a measles outbreak in California (Loehrke & Szabo, 2015), resurgence in controversy surrounding the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine after a Toronto newspaper published a sensationalist story highlighting dramatic and unproven vaccine side effects (English, 2015), and the release of draft U.S. Preventive Service Task Force (USPSTF) breast cancer screening recommendations (USPSTF, 2015). Although it is well known that the media can have a positive influence on health-related attitudes and behaviors (Ramirez et al., 2013; Redmond, Baer, Clark, Lipsitz, & Hicks, 2010), mass media messages that broadcast conflicting and controversial health information raise the potential for adverse effects. Although there is some evidence that exposure to media conflict and controversy is associated with public confusion, decreased trust in health recommendations, and less adoption of prevention and screening behaviors (Han et al., 2009; Nagler, 2014), this research arena remains underexplored.

Water, Human Rights, and Reproductive Justice: Implications for Women in Detroit and Monrovia.

Access to safe water and adequate living standards are recognized as basic health requisites and human rights worldwide. Nevertheless, socially marginalized women across the globe are currently facing threats to safe water access, which has dire implications for their health and that of their children. The City of Detroit, Michigan has recently shut off water services to over 50,000 residences, with low-income and racially marginalized women and their families disproportionately affected. The conditions for many Detroit residents are not unlike those in Monrovia, Liberia, where lack of access to safe water and substandard environments have contributed to the ongoing Ebola epidemic and subsequent maternal and infant mortality. Utilizing a comparative analytic approach rooted in postcolonial feminist theory and intersectionality, our commentary draws parallels between these two timely water, human rights, and reproductive justice crises in Detroit and Monrovia. We explore how public discourse and proposed solutions have failed to acknowledge the historical contexts and sociopolitical determinants of these crises, which have urgent and long-lasting implications for women's reproductive health and social justice worldwide.

The Hormonal Physiology of Women and their Fetuses and Mothers and their Infants

In January 2015, Childbirth Connection released a report titled Hormonal Physiology of Childbearing: Evidence and Implications for Women, Babies, and Maternity Care ( Buckley, 2015 Buckley S.J. Hormonal physiology of childbearing: Evidence and implications for women, babies, and maternity care. Childbirth Connection Programs, National Partnership for Women & Families, Washington, DC2015 Google Scholar ). In this commissioned report, author Sarah Buckley summarized research evidence to describe current understanding of the physiology of childbearing in four hormonal systems: oxytocin, beta‐endorphins, the stress‐related systems of epinephrine‐norepinephrine and cortisol, and prolactin. For each hormonal system, the author described the normal physiology and how common maternity care practices may affect that specific physiology on the basis of research evidence. Dr. Buckley argued that despite incomplete knowledge, what is known “reveals profound interconnections between mothers and babies, among hormone systems, and across childbearing processes and the life course” (p. i). Although this idea may not be new for many of us, Dr. Buckley concluded, “A growing body of research finds that common maternity care interventions may disturb hormonal processes, reduce their benefits, and create new challenges and concerns, including the possibility of adverse longer‐term developmental and epigenetic effects” (p. i). An important contemporary field of biology, epigenetics is the study of how external influences can switch genes on or off to affect the specific proteins transcribed independent of the individual's DNA sequence. Such changes may make the individual more or less prone to certain diseases or more or less likely to experience specific developmental alterations.

A Childbirth Educator's Commentary on Hormonal Physiology of Childbearing: Evidence and Implications for Women, Babies, and Maternity Care.

Sarah Buckley's game-changing report, Hormonal Physiology of Childbearing: Evidence and Implications for Women, Babies, and Maternity Care, provides the evidence that supporting, promoting, and protecting the normal physiology of childbirth produces the best outcomes for mothers and babies. In this article, a childbirth educator recommends key points from Buckley's report that should be included in Lamaze childbirth education classes.

The Qigong and Quality of life Trial: Implications for Women in Cancer Survivorship Phase

The Qigong and Quality of life Trial: Implications for Women in Cancer Survivorship Phase Background: Qigong is widely acknowledged by Asian breast cancer survivors as a potent health-promoting physical activity. This study investigated the hypothesis that quality of life (QoL) in the Qigong group is better than the placebo (aerobic) or usual care group. Methods: 197 participants were randomly assigned to either the 8-week Qigong, Placebo or Usual care (control) group. Measurement taken at baseline and post-intervention included QoL, distress and fatigue. Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) and Kruskal Wallis were used to examine for differences between groups of the measurements.

It’s All About Hormones!

ABSTRACTIn this column, the editor of The Journal of Perinatal Education introduces the Hormonal Physiology of Childbearing: Evidence and Implications for Women, Babies, and Maternity Care published by the National Partnership for Women & Families and reprinted with their permission. The editor also describes the contents of this issue, which offer a broad range of resources, research, and inspiration for childbirth educators in their efforts to promote, support, and protect natural, safe, and healthy birth.

Executive Summary of Hormonal Physiology of Childbearing: Evidence and Implications for Women, Babies, and Maternity Care.

This report synthesizes evidence about innate hormonally mediated physiologic processes in women and fetuses/newborns during childbearing, and possible impacts of common maternity care practices and interventions on these processes, focusing on four hormone systems that are consequential for childbearing. Core hormonal physiology principles reveal profound interconnections between mothers and babies, among hormone systems, and from pregnancy through to the postpartum and newborn periods. Overall, consistent and coherent evidence from physiologic understandings and human and animal studies finds that the innate hormonal physiology of childbearing has significant benefits for mothers and babies. Such hormonally-mediated benefits may extend into the future through optimization of breastfeeding and maternal-infant attachment. A growing body of research finds that common maternity care interventions may disturb hormonal processes, reduce their benefits, and create new challenges. Developmental and epigenetic effects are biologically plausible but poorly studied. The perspective of hormonal physiology adds new considerations for benefit-harm assessments in maternity care, and suggests new research priorities, including consistently measuring crucial hormonally mediated outcomes that are frequently overlooked. Current understanding suggests that safely avoiding unneeded maternity care interventions would be wise, as supported by the Precautionary Principle. Promoting, supporting, and protecting physiologic childbearing, as far as safely possible in each situation, is a low-technology health and wellness approach to the care of childbearing women and their fetuses/newborns that is applicable in almost all maternity care settings.

Changes in Gender Role Stereotypes and their Implications for Women’s Policy: Focusing on Perceptual Differences between 1996 and 2010

Changes in Gender Role Stereotypes and their Implications for Women’s Policy: Focusing on Perceptual Differences between 1996 and 2010

Rethinking Community Within the Context of Social Inclusion as Social Justice: Implications for Women After Federal Incarceration

Very little is known about how women’s experiences with inclusion or exclusion shape their entry into community after they have been incarcerated. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine inclusion from the perspective of women entering community after release from a federal prison in Ontario, Canada. This research project combined feminist participatory action research with anti-oppressive theories. Women who had been incarcerated were asked to come together to discuss ideas around inclusion and explore ways to foster a more inclusive environment. As women described the kind of community they experienced before and after incarceration, themes of being pushed out of community, being pulled into community, and negotiating issues of responsibility were evident. At the core of these themes was a powerful sense of difference. Findings suggest that deep societal change is needed for women to truly experience social inclusion upon their release from federal prison. They also suggest a role for community in supporting personal change and growth. We argue that if principles of social justice guided inclusion efforts, there would be dialogue and negotiation aimed at re-imagining social inclusion and creating a space that is hopeful and inclusive for all citizens.

Obesity: Implications for Women’s Reproductive Health

Obesity is an epidemic in the developed world. In the U.S., over one-third of women are now obese, with significant adverse consequences for their reproductive and long-term health. Many of these women gain excessive weight in pregnancy and retain it postpartum, with an additive effect across multiple pregnancies. Maternal obesity is associated with an increased risk for miscarriage, congenital anomalies, stillbirth, gestational diabetes, preeclampsia, and cesarean section. Offspring of obese women are at increased risk for being large for gestational age and may be programmed for obesity and metabolic syndrome, thus perpetuating a cycle of obesity across generations. Certain alterations to routine prenatal care may be necessary for obese women in order to optimize obstetric and neonatal outcomes. Future research priorities should be aimed at understanding the biologic mechanisms underlying the adverse outcomes associated with maternal obesity and at developing effective interventions for this growing high-risk population.

Impact of Breastfeeding on Maternal Metabolism: Implications for Women with Gestational Diabetes

Lactating compared with nonlactating women display more favorable metabolic parameters, including less atherogenic blood lipids, lower fasting and postprandial blood glucose as well as insulin, and greater insulin sensitivity in the first 4 months postpartum. However, direct evidence demonstrating that these metabolic changes persist from delivery to postweaning is much less available. Studies have reported that longer lactation duration may reduce long-term risk of cardiometabolic disease, including type 2 diabetes, but findings from most studies are limited by self-report of disease outcomes, absence of longitudinal biochemical data, or no assessment of maternal lifestyle behaviors. Studies of women with a history gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) also reported associations between lactation duration and lower the incidence of type 2 diabetes and the metabolic syndrome. The mechanisms are not understood, but hormonal regulation of pancreatic β-cell proliferation and function or other metabolic pathways may mediate the lactation association with cardiometabolic disease in women.

Crowdfunding: A Consortium of Research Perspectives

The papers in this symposium share a common focus on crowdfunding platforms, an alternate vehicle for entrepreneurial and social finance that has garnered attention of researchers (Agrawal, Catalini, & Goldfarb, 2011; Lin, Prabhala, & Viswanathan, 2013; Mollick, 2014; Zhang & Liu, 2012) and media (BusinessWire, 2006; Hof, 2006; Said, 2006) alike. While public needs for alternative forms of capital make the study of crowdfunding an important site of study in and of itself, this symposium also brings together researchers who are interested in exploring longstanding questions of entrepreneurship, organizations, and markets in this emergent research setting. For instance, we address questions as the following: What are the consequences of increased anonymity and standardization in markets? Does ‘democratized’ funding grant women more equitable access to resources ? Can embedded ties endure in crowdfunding markets amid pressures to adopt market logics? The proposal proceeds with a brief overview of each paper, followed by a discussion of the proposed format and the anticipated division sponsors. The Hidden Cost of Accommodating Crowdfunder Privacy Preferences: A Randomized Field Experiment Presenter: Gordon Burtch; U. of Minnesota Presenter: Anindya Ghose; New York U. Presenter: Sunil Wattal; Temple U. Gender and Beauty in a Peer-to-peer Loan Market: Implications for Women in Small Business Presenter: Ko Kuwabara; Columbia Business School Presenter: Sarah Thébaud; UC Santa Barbara A Crowd or a Community?: How Community Membership Influences the Perception of Worthiness Presenter: Peter Younkin; McGill U. Presenter: Keyvan Kashkooli; U. of California, Los Angeles Who Contributes More to Crowdfunding Campaigns? Evidence from Indiegogo Presenter: Venkat Kuppuswamy; U. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Presenter: Barry Bayus; U. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Commensurating Community: The Impact of Standardization on Social Bases of Exchange Presenter: Brian Philip Reschke; U. of California, Berkeley

Index to Volume 38

Index to Volume 38

Feminist Internships and the Depression of Political Imagination: Implications for Women's Studies

Scholars have paid ample attention to many of the effects of the institutionalization of the women's movement, but have not sufficiently attended to how such formalization has affected younger generations' perceptions of what it means to be politically active. The article uses interviews with an ethnically and racially diverse sample of Canadian university students who interned in feminist organizations to better understand their perceptions. The authors found the "feminist internship" to have predictable features that depress students' understanding of the kind of social change or challenges that are possible, and that train them to think of activism as another form of paid employment—a process the authors refer to as the routinization of political consciousness. Significantly, too, they found the likening of activism to work has also transformed social interactions among generations in the movement, replacing conflict and contestation about political goals and means with a script akin to employer/employee relations. Despite the trend towards formalization, students in the study most valued organizations in which staff members broke rules, attended to political ethics, eschewed hierarchy, strove for transparency, and openly debated ideas, signaling that de-professionalization may be a sound strategy for producing more movement adherents from emerging generations. Finally, the article reflects upon the role of women's studies units in brokering these relations between students and organizations, explicating how internships also lead students to revise their conceptions of women's studies curriculum as impractically critical and utopian.

Ovarian Reserve: Regulation and Implications for Women’s Health. Proceedings of the 2012 NICHD-ASRM Conference

Ovarian Reserve: Regulation and Implications for Women’s Health. Proceedings of the 2012 NICHD-ASRM Conference

Arrests of and Forced Interventions on Pregnant Women in the United States, 1973–2005: Implications for Women's Legal Status and Public Health

In November 2011, the citizens of Mississippi voted down Proposition 26, a "personhood" measure that sought to establish separate constitutional rights for fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses. This proposition raised the question of whether such measures could be used as the basis for depriving pregnant women of their liberty through arrests or forced medical interventions. Over the past four decades, descriptions of selected subsets of arrests and forced interventions on pregnant women have been published. Such cases, however, have never been systematically identified and documented, nor has the basis for the deprivations of liberty been comprehensively examined. In this article we report on 413 cases from 1973 to 2005 in which a woman's pregnancy was a necessary factor leading to attempted and actual deprivations of a woman's physical liberty. First, we describe key characteristics of the cases and the women, including socioeconomic status and race. Second, we investigate the legal claims made to justify the arrests, detentions, and forced interventions. Third, we explore the role played by health care providers. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings and the likely impact of personhood measures on pregnant women's liberty and on maternal, fetal, and child health.

Title IX: Implications for Women in Sport and Education (DVD Review)

Title IX: Implications for Women in Sport and Education (DVD Review)

Overcoming the Global Injustices of Energy Poverty

Joan Brown, a college student in Atlanta, Georgia, wakes up in the morning to an electronic alarm clock before she microwaves breakfast, takes a hot shower, grabs a latte at Starbucks, and drives h...

Surgical Adhesions: Implications for Women's Health: Part One of a Two-Part Series

Postoperative adhesions are a significant health problem, with major implications for quality of life and health care expenses. Intra-abdominal adhesions occur in 55 percent to 100 percent of women following abdominal or pelvic surgery, and the risk of adhesion formation increases with each subsequent abdominal and pelvic surgery. The small bowel is the most common site of adhesions following gynecologic surgery. Adhesions are increasingly being recognized as major contributors to chronic pelvic pain, infertility and gastrointestinal problems.

Surgical Adhesions: Implications for Women's Health: Part Two of a Two-Part Series

Adhesions are a common consequence of abdominal and pelvic surgery, but there is a low level of awareness about adhesions and adhesions prevention among both health care professionals and consumers. Strategies to try to reduce or prevent the formation of postsurgical adhesions include meticulous surgical technique and use of physical separation barriers. Nurses can play a role in educating patients about the risks and implications of adhesions. DOI: 10.1111/j.1751-486X.2012.01708.x