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Researchers often debate health service structure. Understanding of the practical implications of this debate is often limited by researchers' neglect to integrate participants' views on structural options with discourses those views represent. As a case study, this paper aims to discern the extent to which and how conceptual underpinnings of stakeholder views on women's health contextualize different positions in the debate over the ideal structure of health services.

The researchers chose a self-standing, comprehensive women's health service facing the prospect of being dispersed into “mainstream” health services. The researchers gathered perspectives of 53 professional and consumer stakeholders in ten focus groups and seven semi-structured interviews, analyzed through inductive thematic analysis.

“Women's marginalization” was the core theme of the debate over structure. The authors found clear patterns between views on the function of women's health services, women's health needs, ideal client group, ideal health service structure and particular feminist discourses. The desire to re-organize services into separate mainstream units reflected a liberal feminist discourse, conceiving marginalization as explicit demonstration of its effects, such as domestic abuse. The desire to maintain a comprehensive women's health service variously reflected post-structural feminism's emphasis on plurality of identities, and a radical feminist discourse, holding that womanhood itself constituted a category of marginalization – that is, merely being at risk of unmet health needs.

As a contribution to health organizational theory, the paper shows that the discernment of discursive underpinnings of particular stakeholder views can clarify options for the structure of health services.

The purpose of this research was to investigate the nature of the coverage of health issues in magazines, and specifically to compare the coverage in men's and women's magazines Content analysis was used to examine the health information in the six upmarket magazines (Cosmopolitan, Elle, Esquire, GQ, Marie‐Claire, and Maxim) selected for the study, with a wide range of criteria used to analyse the health information contained in them. Interviews with four of the health editors from the sample were conducted in order to elucidate some of the main findings. Unexpectedly, the differences in health information coverage are greater between the individual magazines than between the total women's and men's groups. Overall, men's magazines appear to treat health information in a more informative manner than women's, although both groups provide unusually high levels of information required to change their readers health behaviour. With this level of information provision it is noteworthy that many of these magazines have no clear health information policy, and that their editors have no qualifications or training in either health or science.

This study aims to identify and explore experiences, perspectives, barriers and enablers to women’s career progression to management positions in the health-care sector and to assess women’s and men’s perceptions of the policies and practices of the health-care system concerning gender equality and nondiscrimination between women and men.

A cross-sectional survey was conducted among health-care professionals in ten selected hospitals, including physicians, registered nurses/midwives and pharmacists with or without managerial positions.

This study included a total of 2,082 female and 1,100 male health-care professionals. Overall, 70% of women and men reported that opportunities for advancement are based on knowledge and skills in their institution. However, 58.9% of women (p < 0.001) reported that women are more likely to face barriers to career advancement than men do in their workplace. Lack of women in general/line management and discrimination against women by supervisors at the point of promotion were the main barriers to women's career progression, as they were reported by two-thirds of women. The main barrier, as perceived by men (62.3%) was that women have family and domestic responsibilities.

To overcome barriers in women's career progression, there is a need to establish a career planning and capacity-building program for women in the health sector.

Jordanian female health-care professionals face different barriers that affect their career progression, including inequity and discrimination in the workplace, negative views about women’s abilities, lack of qualifications and training, hostile cultural beliefs and family responsibilities.

This article presents a selection of women’s health resources on the Internet. These Web sites are useful to researchers, physicians, patients and the general public. Sites are grouped into the following major categories: gateway sites, associations, fertility and family planning, women’s special health concerns, emotional and mental health, violence against women, nutrition and fitness, older women, women of color, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons, and women with disabilities.

In this article we explore how inpatient mental health services in England and Wales are interpreting and responding to policy derived from Mainstreaming Gender and Women's Mental Health (DH, 2003) in relation to women's safety in inpatient settings. This article will outline the background to concerns about safety in mental health settings for women and drawing on relevant literature and on interviews with service managers, practitioners and users identify some current issues in improving safety for women in inpatient settings and in creating single sex provision. Our review suggests that whilst there are improvements in provision for women in inpatient settings, some women are still not being offered a real choice of a women‐only setting on admission to hospital, and that changing the culture that permits a lack of physical and relational safety for women presents real challenges. We will discuss some of the implications for future practice.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between the ratification of the United Nations’ (UN’s) Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and women’s and girls’ health outcomes using a unique longitudinal data set of 192 UN-member countries that encompasses the years from 1980 to 2011.

The authors focus on the impact of CEDAW ratification, number of reports submitted after ratification, years passed since ratification, and the dynamic impact of CEDAW ratification by utilizing ordinary least squares (OLS) and panel fixed effects methods. The study investigates the following women’s and girls’ health outcomes: total fertility rate, adolescent fertility rate, infant mortality rate, maternal mortality ratio, neonatal mortality rate, female life expectancy at birth (FLEB), and female to male life expectancy at birth.

The OLS and panel country and year fixed effects models provide evidence that the impact of CEDAW ratification on women’s and girls’ health outcomes varies by global regions. While the authors find no significant gains in health outcomes in European and North-American countries, the countries in the Northern Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, Southern Africa, Caribbean and Central America, South America, Middle-East, Eastern Asia, and Oceania regions experienced the biggest gains from CEDAW ratification, exhibiting reductions in total fertility, adolescent fertility, infant mortality, maternal mortality, and neonatal mortality while also showing improvements in FLEB. The results provide evidence that both early commitment to CEDAW as measured by the total number of years of engagement after the UN’s 1980 ratification and the timely submission of mandatory CEDAW reports have positive impacts on women’ and girls’ health outcomes. Several sensitivity tests confirm the robustness of main findings.

This study is the first comprehensive attempt to explore the multifaceted relationships between CEDAW ratification and female health outcomes. The study significantly expands on the methods of earlier research and presents novel methods and findings on the relationship between CEDAW ratification and women’s health outcomes. The findings suggest that the impact of CEDAW ratification significantly depends on the country’s region. Furthermore, stronger engagement with CEDAW (as indicated by the total number of years following country ratification) and the submission of the required CEDAW reports (as outlined in the Convention’s guidelines) have positive impacts on women’s and girls’ health outcomes.

This paper presents an analysis of how health intersects with the experience of housing insecurity and homelessness, specifically for migrant women. The authors argue that it is important to understand the specificities of the interplay of these different factors to continue the advancement of our understanding and practice as advocates for health and housing security.

An exploratory, qualitative, methodological approach was adopted, using a broad definition of housing insecurity: from absolute homelessness (e.g. residing rough) to invisible homelessness (e.g. couch surfing) to those at risk of homelessness. In total, 26 newcomer (foreign-born women who came to live in Canada during the previous ten years, regardless of their immigration status) women were recruited in Montreal, Canada. Participants were recruited directly through advertisements in public places and in collaboration with community organizations (women’s centers, homeless shelters, crisis centers, domestic violence shelters, immigrant settlement agencies and ethnic associations) and they self-identified as having experienced housing insecurity. Efforts were made to include a diversity of immigrant statuses as well as diversity in ethnicity, race, country of origin, family composition, sexual orientation, age and range of physical and mental ability. Women were engaged in semi-structured, open-ended interviews lasting approximately 1 h. Interviews were conducted in English or French in a location and time of participants’ choosing.

The findings are presented around three themes: how health problems instigate and maintain migrant women’s housing insecurity and homelessness; ways in which women’s immigration trajectories and legal status may influence their health experiences; and particular coping strategies that migrant women employ in efforts to maintain or manage their health. The authors conclude with implications of these findings for both policy and practice in relation to migrant women who experience or are at risk of housing insecurity and homelessness.

Intersections of women experiencing migration and housing insecurity in Canadian contexts have rarely been examined. This paper addresses a gap in the literature in terms of topic and context, but also in terms of sharing the voices of migrant women with direct experience with housing insecurity.

Women’s health is considered a big public health issue, impacting personal well-being, family reproduction, and society’s development. Since the foundation of the People’s Republic of China, major improvements in women’s social status and health have been made. However, far less has been achieved with respect to gender equality and women still face health disparities. The purpose of this paper is to provide a better understanding of health and health care disparities among women and their determinants in China today.

This paper used the Statistical Yearbook of Health and Family Planning 2014, the 2010 Women’s Social Status Survey and 2010 census data from the National Bureau of Statistics to give an overall description of disparity in health care and health outcome facing women.

Progress in health is not equally shared by the female population, and the differences in women’s health by region and in urban and rural areas are considerable. The existing health disparities are still faced by women in terms of life expectancy, hazardous working environment, and health care services. As to gender differences among the elderly aged 60+, men have better health status compared to women. In addition, women are more financially dependent on other family members for the main source of daily living, reflecting their economic disadvantages.

This study gives a comprehensive and the latest overview of trends of women’s health progress, disparities in health care, and health outcomes both in female population and between genders by using three data sources.

In a paper published in 1986, Helen B. Josephine and Deborah K. Blouin discuss four areas where new reference works in women's studies were needed: statistical sources, encyclopedias, yearbooks, and abstracting and indexing services. Using modified criteria outlined in Josephine's and Blouin's article, this article evaluates print statistical sources that specifically cover women and that were published in English during the 1990s. Evaluations discuss titles in terms of their inclusion of comparisons based on gender, age, race/ethnicity, and time period (historical) in both statistical material and indexing. Evaluations also mention the variety of sources cited, scope, and the presence or absence of introductory material, narrative highlights, bibliographies of sources, full citation for each statistic, and explanatory footnotes. Evaluation of the accuracy of the statistics themselves or the adequacy of statistical methodology is beyond the scope of this article.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between women’s sexual health agency and their intent to initiate communications with their doctors. The research questions examined the effect sexual health agency has on patient-doctor communication, women’s emotional responses to health advertisements encouraging patient communication with their doctors, attitude toward the message and behavioral intentions after exposure to the advertising message.

An experimental design was implemented via an online questionnaire instrument to test the differences between younger-aged women (25 to 45 years) and mature-aged women (46 to 70 years). It was observed that 188 women who reported their status as single and sexually active in the past 12 months were exposed to a health advertisement that encouraged patient-doctor communication. Analyses were conducted to compare between-group measures on sexual health agency, emotional response and attitude toward the ad and behavioral intention.

No statistical difference existed between younger and older women. In general, women expect their doctor to lead conversations about sexual health but are positively reinforced by health messages that encourage their assertiveness as patients.

The small sample size also may have limited the study’s potential to evaluate differences between age segments. Future research should explore this further.

The study provides evidence that sexual health advertising can reinforce women’s intent to initiate conversations with doctors regardless of age.

Health communications can bolster women’s sexual health agency and improve patient-initiated conversations with doctors.

The study is the first to explore advertising messaging’s potential for applying health agency as a communication strategy for encouraging sexual health communications between women and their doctors.