Day Three - Health
Four 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.
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.
Forty years ago we declared that Sisterhood is Powerful, and it still is. We must remember that, must continue moving forward.
It's 2010 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
Knowledge is power.
Did you know that roughly eighteen percent of women in the United States lack health insurance of any kind? Did you know that both insured and uninsured women are more likely than men to report difficulty obtaining health care because of cost? Did you know that only 27 states require health insurance companies to cover birth control? Did you know that heart attacks are more deadly to women than men, and women are more likely to die from a stroke than men are? Did you know that the United States rates 41st in the world in maternal mortality rates? Did you know that women are more likely to contract sexually transmitted diseases and that slightly over half of all people with AIDS and HIV are women?
Women’s health issues, with the notable exception of breast cancer, tend to be ignored and swept under the rug. Many of us are unaware of the greatest dangers to our health, and some of us lack even basic preventative care that could save our lives at a future date. Even with the vast amount of attention paid to breast cancer, over twenty five percent of women in America skip mammograms, and nearly fifteen percent of us skip our annual pap smear. Despite the fact that heart disease accounts for one third of all female deaths, twenty five percent of women have not had a cholesterol screening.
Knowledge is power.
HealthyWomen is all about empowering women though knowledge. For more than two decades, they “have developed and distributed up-to-date and objective women's health information based on the latest advances in medical research and practice, all of which is reviewed by leading medical specialists in the field.” The founder of HealthyWomen, Dr.Violet Bowen-Hugh, envisioned a “a place where women could access health information to meet their personal needs no matter what their educational or socioeconomic background”, and through their website and free publications, distributed at clinics nationwide, this organization is fulfilling that dream.