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Virtual Special Issue

Virtual Special Issue on feminism and the sociology of gender, health and illness
Editorial by Hannah Bradby

This editorial considers how the study of gender and health has played out in the pages of the Sociology of Health and Illness over the past quarter century, paying particular attention to how a theory of gender has informed empirical work and the relevance of gender studies for the feminist challenge to sexism and the patriarchal order. Work in this journal on gender and health has considered the invisibility of women, grappled with the conflation of sex and gender and interrogated polarised binary thinking, attempting to use sociological approaches to the body and novel post-structural metaphors to analyse both gendered roles and their relationship with gendered bodies and states of health and illness.

Read the full editorial

List of articles appearing in the Virtual Special Issue

Annandale, Ellen and Judith Clark
What is gender? Feminist theory and the sociology of human reproduction.
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 18, issue 1, page 17–44, Jan 1996, doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.ep10934409

Annandale, Ellen and Kate Hunt
Masculinity, femininity and sex: an exploration of their relative contribution to explaining gender differences in health.
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 12, issue 1, page 24–46, Mar 1990, doi:10.1111/1467-9566.ep10844865

Arber, Sara, G. Nigel Gilbert and Angela Dale
Paid employment and women's health: a benefit or a source of role strain?
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 7, issue 3, page 375–400 Nov 1985, doi:10.1111/1467-9566.ep10834014

Bartley, Mel, Jennie Popay and Ian Plewis
Domestic conditions, paid employment and women's experience of ill-health.
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 14, issue 3, page 313–343, Sep 1992, doi:10.1111/1467-9566.ep11357495

Batnitzky, Adina
Obesity and household roles: gender and social class in Morocco
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 30, issue 3, page 445–462, Apr 2008, doi:10.1111/j.1467-9566.2007.01067.x

Browne, Jan and Victor Minichiello
The condom: why more people don't put it on.
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 16, issue 2, page 229–251, Mar 1994, doi:10.1111/1467-9566.ep11347391

Campbell, Rona and Sam Porter
Feminist Theory and the Sociology of Childbirth: a Response to Ellen Annandale and Judith Clark
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 19, issue 3, page 348–358, Jun 1997, doi:10.1111/1467-9566.00055

Charles, Cathy, Tim Whelan, Amiram Gafni, Leonard Reyno and Cristina Redko
Doing Nothing is No Choice: Lay Constructions of Treatment Decision-making Among Women with Early-stage Breast Cancer
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 20, issue 1, page 71–95, Jan 1998 doi:10.1111/1467-9566.00081

Clarke, Juanne N.  
Sexism, feminism and medicalism: a decade review of literature on gender and illness.
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 5, issue 1, page 62–82, Mar 1983, doi:10.1111/1467-9566.ep11340067

Davies, Karen
The body and doing gender: the relations between doctors and nurses in hospital work
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 25, issue 7, page 720–742, Nov 2003, doi:10.1046/j.1467-9566.2003.00367.x

Emslie, Carol, Kate Hunt and Graham Watt
Invisible women? The importance of gender in lay beliefs about heart problems
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 23, issue 2, page 203–233, Mar 2001, doi:10.1111/1467-9566.00248

Holland, Janet, Caroline Ramazanoglu, Sue Scott, Sue Sharpe and Rachel Thomson
Sex, gender and power: young women's sexuality in the shadow of AIDS.
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 12, issue 3, page 336–350, Sep 1990, doi:10.1111/1467-9566.ep11347264

Hunt, Kate and Ellen Annandale
Just the job? Is the relationship between health and domestic and paid work gender-specific?
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 15, issue 5, page 632–664, Nov 1993, doi:10.1111/1467-9566.ep11434424

Mumtaz, Zubia and Sarah M. Salway
Gender, pregnancy and the uptake of antenatal care services in Pakistan
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 29, issue 1, page 1–26, Jan 2007, doi:10.1111/j.1467-9566.2007.00519.x

Nazroo, James Y., Angela C. Edwards and George W. Brown
Gender Differences in the Prevalence of Depression: Artefact, Alternative Disorders, Biology or Roles?
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 20, issue 3, page 312–330, May 1998, doi:10.1111/1467-9566.00104

Oliffe, John
Embodied masculinity and androgen deprivation therapy
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 28, issue 4, page 410–432, May 2006, doi:10.1111/j.1467-9566.2006.00499.x

Robertson, Steve
'I've been like a coiled spring this last week': embodied masculinity and health
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 28, issue 4, page 433–456, May 2006, doi:10.1111/j.1467-9566.2006.00500.x

Walters, Vivienne, Susan French, John Eyles, Rhonda Lenton, Bruce Newbold and Janet Mayr
The effect of paid and unpaid work on nurses' well-being: the importance of gender.
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 19, issue 3, page 328–347, Jun 1997, doi:10.1111/1467-9566.ep11057167

Cited references other than SHI papers

Annandale, E. (1998) The Sociology of Health and Medicine: A critical introduction. Polity Press.

Courtenay, W. H. (2000) Constructions of masculinity and their influence on men's well-being: a theory of gender and health, Social Science and Medicine 50, 10, 1385-401.
  
Humm, M. (ed.) (1992) Feminisms. A Reader. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

Maynard, M. (1990) The re-shaping of sociology? Trends in the study of gender, Sociology, 24, 269-90.