[Day 3] Health
Two years ago rageprufrock began the first 14 Valentines and she spoke of how women are praised in song, worshiped in poetry, and derided in culture. She spoke beautifully and elegantly of women, comparing our bodies to luminous flowers. She spoke of the state of women, and the need to remember what we go through, what women throughout the world suffer through.
We are daughters, sisters, mothers, and lovers. If we choose, we can bring life into world with our blood and nourish it with our bodies, but the world that we helped create, that women have bled for and fought for and cried for, doesn't recognize us. Our history is one of abuse. We are not safe.
Women suffer from domestic violence and rape. We are devalued. We are taught that we are lesser. There is still so much work to do, so much for us to accomplish.
It's 2008 and Hillary Rodham Clinton is, as I write this, campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination in the U.S. Yet, even as this is happening, women are being killed the world over, suffering from infanticide, dying from lack of medical care, killing themselves in the fight to be what society tells them they must. One in three women will still experience sexual assault in her lifetime. So much has changed and so much has stayed the same.
It's 2008 and we've come so far, but there is still more work to be done. We deserve better, and we can do more. We're strong. The next fourteen days is meant to remind us of that. It's our time to take back our bodies.
V can stand for vagina, like Eve Ensler's groundbreaking monologues. V can stand for violence, under whose auspices all women continue to make a home.
V can also stand for victory.
Health
October is National Breast Cancer Awareness month. Everything from yogurt to cars suddenly are pink and everywhere you look, people are encouraging you to examine your breasts, to get your mammograms, to be aware of your health, to know the facts about this life threatening disease. Women come together to support each other through marathons, auctions, and rallies. Support for the cause is everywhere you look, and millions of dollars are raised annually for research into this disease. It's amazing and awe inspiring, and it doesn't last.
November rolls around, and the issues concerning the health of women are still there, even if the pink and the breasts have been banished from the public consciousness for another year. The bias in the medical community is staggering - the leading cause of death in US women is heart disease. Out of over twenty thousand volunteers, there were no women involved in the study that concluded that a small dose of aspirin can reduce the chances of having a heart attack. Worldwide, cervical cancer affects about 1 per 123 women per year and kills about 9 per 100,000, and yet the vaccination for the virus causing it is still being argued against in the US, on the grounds that it may encourage teenage sexual activity, and many insurance companies are refusing to cover the costs. Women are denied safe and sanitary abortions all over the world, and birth control is often difficult to come by, despite the wear and tear that constant childbearing has on a woman's body. September is set aside for ovarian cancer awareness, but doesn't receive even a fraction of the attention that the next month will get, regardless of the fact that ovarian cancer is the fifth most deadly cancer to women.
Progress is slow, but it's coming. In 1993, the FDA ended its decades long ban on women being involved in drug trials at all, instructing drug companies that "women simply must be included." The fact that a vaccine for HPV, the virus that causes cervical cells to mutate and become cancerous, even exists is a huge step; that the state of Nevada has made it law for health insurance companies to cover it is another. (New Hampshire and Alaska have passed bills requiring the state to cover the cost for girls up to age 18.) Organizations like Susan G Koman for the Cure continue to raise money for breast cancer research - the battle is year round, not just in October.
There are organizations like the National Women's Health Network, which, as their mission statement says, has been working for over thirty years to improve the health of all women by developing and promoting a critical analysis of health issues to affect policy and support consumer decision-making. NWHN helps keep us informed and pushes for funding for research and policies that support women and women's health.