The women's health centre movement: a radical alternative in health care for women

Abstract

The Women's Health Movement is of international proportions. Its ideology is based on feminist and community health principles, and one of its practical expressions has been the Women's Health Centre. These Centres offer not only an alternative type of care, but a service that is based on a different political relationship between the deliverers of the health care and the receivers of that care. This alternative was conceived through an analysis of the relationship that exists between these two parties in traditional health care delivery and the belief that this system is a microcosm of male/female relationships in society as a whole. The Women's Movement is active in New Zealand and there is an increasing interest in the theories of community based health services. Thus, the preconditions for the development of the Women's Health Movement exist in New Zealand, and there has already been one attempt in 1975 at the setting up of a Women's Health Centre in Wellington. Although this was not successful, there has been an increasing interest in health as a feminist issue in New Zealand, and subsequent events indicate that the Women's Health Movement has reached New Zealand. The provision of Women's Health Centres would seen to be imminent.