"You just look at our work and see if you have any freedom on earth": Ghanaian women's accounts of their work and their health
"You just look at our work and see if you have any freedom on earth": Ghanaian women's accounts of their work and their health
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DOI：
10.1016/s0277-9536(98)00422-5
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发表时间：
1999-05-01
影响因子：
5.4
通讯作者：
Walters, V
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Avotri, JY;Walters, V
对发展中世界妇女健康的研究侧重于生殖问题，并将妇女主要定义为妻子和母亲。此外，妇女的健康问题通常由卫生保健专业人员和政策制定者等专家来界定。这里报告的研究旨在了解妇女自己对其主要健康问题的看法以及她们如何解释这些问题。这项研究是在西非加纳的Volta地区进行的，它采访了75名不同背景和社会环境的妇女。在女性描述的问题中，生殖健康问题并不突出——近四分之三的女性详细地谈到了心理社会健康问题，如“想得太多”和“担心得太多”。反过来，这些问题往往与疲劳和无法入睡等问题有关。许多女性还提到了头痛和身体疼痛。在解释这些问题的根源时，妇女叙述中最强烈的主题之一是她们的工作角色的重要性。妇女们谈到了性别分工、繁重的工作量、工作的“强制性”、经济上的不安全感以及为孩子承担的巨大经济责任。这些导致了他们所经历的担忧，并导致他们参加许多不同的工作活动。他们还谈到了他们的工作性质与他们所经历的健康问题之间的具体联系，特别是他们的工作对身体造成的伤害。我们建议，必须记录妇女有偿和无偿工作的内容，说明这些工作如何影响她们的身心健康。发展中的妇女；长期以来，国家一直被定义为生育者，而他们作为劳动者的重要作用往往被忽视。1999爱思唯尔科学有限公司版权所有。
Research on women's health in the developing world has focussed on reproductive issues and has defined women primarily as wives and mothers. Moreover, women's health problems have typically been defined by experts such:as health care professionals and policymakers, The research reported here aimed to capture women's own views of their main health problems and how they explain them. The study was conducted in the Volta region of Ghana, West Africa and it involved interviews with 75 women of varying background and social circumstances.Reproductive health problems did not figure prominently among the problems women described- almost three quarters of them spoke at length of psyche-social health problems such as 'thinking too much' and 'worrying too much'. These, in turn, were often linked with problems such as tiredness and not being able to sleep. Headaches and bodily aches and pains were also mentioned by many of the women. In explaining the source of these problems, one of the strongest themes in women's accounts was the importance of their work roles. Women spoke of the gender division of labor, their heavy workloads, the 'compulsory' nature of their work, their financial insecurity and the considerable financial responsibility they assumed for their children. These contributed to the worry they experienced and led them into many different work activities. They also talked about specific links between the nature of their work and the health problems they experienced, in particular, the physical toll of their work.We suggest that it is important to document the content of women's work, both paid and unpaid, showing the ways in which it influences their physical and mental health. Women in developing;countries have too long been defined as childbearers and their important roles as workers have too often been neglected. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.