The Palgrave Handbook of Gender and Healthcare

This authoritative, state-of-the-art reference collection addresses the main issues and core debates related to gender and healthcare in one accessible volume. Mapping the field, and drawing together cutting-edge research on gender and healthcare, this essential guide to an area of increasing interest provides a critical overview of debates as well as practical guidance on how to bring gender perspectives to the heart of international health policy, practice, and research.

Providing an integrated and context-sensitive approach that focuses on men's and women's health, actor-centered and institutional approaches to healthcare, as well as to the needs of service users and professionals, this comprehensive and innovative overview examines both the developed and developing world, and explores intersections between gender and a wide range of social inequalities.

Divided into five parts this panoramic survey covers
‧ The gendering of healthcare and policy
‧ The social patterning of health by gender
‧ Equity and access to healthcare
‧ The organization and delivery of healthcare
‧ Health professions and gender

Offering an impressive range of international world class expertise and insight, each chapter includes a chapter summary and an overview of key reading, making this Handbook an invaluable companion for a wide range of academics, researchers, practitioners and policymakers.

ELLEN KUHLMANN is Visiting Professor of Sociology, Goethe-University Frankfurt, Germany, and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social and Policy Sciences, University of Bath, UK. She has published widely in German, and her recent English publications include Modernising Health Care: Reinventing Professions, the State and the Public and Rethinking Professional Governance:International Direction in Healthcare.

ELLEN ANNANDALE is Reader in Sociology, University of Leicester, UK. She is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Social Science& Medicine. Her work focuses on the relationship between gender and health. She is author of The Sociology of Health and Medicine and co-editor of five edited collections including New Connections: Towards a Gender Inclusive Approach to Women's and Men's Health. Her most recent book is Women's Health and SocialChange.