For centuries, women have been perceived as weak, sickly creatures. Assumptions have been made about the small size of their brains and their inferior intelligence, as well as their frailty. This position has shaped the beliefs and attitudes of the medical community, leading to the belief almost a priori that most health complaints presented by women may be psychosomatic in nature or have a psychological underpinning. For example, nausea in pregnancy was believed to result from the resentment or resentment of women who were not well prepared for motherhood.
Women were believed to be "dominated by their uterus and ovaries." To illustrate the extent to which such stereotypes are embedded in our culture, it is worth noting that the term “hysteria,” which originates from the Latin root of “hyster,” meaning uterus, is today a term used in common language to refer to “wild uncontrolled emotion or excitement,” as defined in the Oxford American Dictionary (1980). To this day, the term “hysteria” is used in the medical lexicon to refer to nervous affections that occur mostly in women. According to the Merriam-Webster Online Medical Dictionary, hysteria is “1. a psychological disorder marked by emotional excitement and disturbances of the sensory, vasomotor, and visceral organs without an organic basis, and 2. behavior exhibiting overwhelming or unbearable fear or emotional distress.” Given such attitudes, it is no surprise, for example, that the removal of the ovaries, or female castration, was performed to treat psychological illnesses.
Female reproductive health has several elements -or phenomena- that have shaped society's perceptions of women and their health over time. From a biological perspective, the fact that menstruation and childbirth are unique to women and that they are often accompanied by a level of pain and discomfort (such as bleeding and cramping in menstruation and labor pains in childbirth) is likely to have helped develop the perception of women as sick and vulnerable compared to men. Menopause has led to a clearer understanding of the presence of a biological clock in women's reproductive functions; in cultures in which women are valued almost exclusively for their reproductive abilities, reaching menopause leads to a sense of finality and uselessness, and even an end to sexuality. In contrast, men's continued sexual functions and reproductive function at their (apparently) older ages may contribute to their sense of superiority in that regard.
From a socioeconomic perspective, women's traditional role in attending to their families has been greatly responsible for the lesser devotion of their mental and physical energies to the personal development of their minds and bodies; this focus has contributed to the gender inequalities in education, secure work, and income observed throughout history and that persist to this day. It is through consideration of the complex and strongly interconnected set of biological, social, legal, political, and economic factors that women's health and their quality of life must be studied. The following sections provide a brief overview of some of these factors.
